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NOTTING HILL

01 BERT K. CHEST RTON

THE LIBRARY

OF
THE UNIVERSITY

OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELLS

The Napoleon of Netting Hill

IN THE DARK ENTRANCE THERE APPEARED A FLAMING FIGURE

THE NAPOLEON

NOTTING HILL

By
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON

Author of "HERETICS"

With Seven Illustrations by
WILLIAM GRAHAM ROBERTSON
and a Map of the Seat of War

NEW YORK : JOHN LANE COMPANY
LONDON : JOHN LANE : THE BODLEY HEAD

MCMVI

Set up and Electrotyped by
William G. Hewitt, New York, U. S. A.

College

library

p fp

TO HILAIRE BELLOC

For every tiny town or place
God made the stars especially ;
Babies look up with owlish face
And see them tangled in a tree :
You saw a moon from Sussex Downs,
A Sussex moon, untravelled still,
I saw a moon that was the town1 s,
The largest lamp on Campden Hill.

Tea ; Heaven is everywhere at home
The big blue cap that always Jits,
And so it is (be calm ; they come
To goal at last, my wandering wits),
So is it with the heroic thing ;
This shall not end for the world's end
And though the sullen engines swing,
Be you not much afraid, my friend.

This did not end by Nelson* s urn
Where an immortal England sits —
Nor where your tall young men in turn
Drank death like wine at Austerlitz.
And when the pedants bade us mark
What cold mechanic happenings
Must come ; our souls said in the dark,
" Belike ; but there are likelier things. "
7

20R41 G9

Dedication

Likelier across these fiats afar
These sulky levels smooth and free
The drums shall crash a waltz of war
And Death shall dance with Liberty ;
Likelier the barricades shall blare
Slaughter below and smoke above,
And death and hate and bell declare
That men have found a thing to love.

Far from your sunny uplands set
1 saw the dream ; the streets I trod
The lit straight streets shot out and met
The starry streets that point to God.
This legend of an epic hour
A child I dreamed, and dream it still,
Under the great grey water-tower
That strikes the stars on Camp den Hill.

G. K.

CONTENTS

BOOK I

Chapter Page
I. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS ON THE ART OF

PROPHECY 13

II. THE MAN IN GREEN 21

III. THE HILL OF HUMOUR 49

BOOK II

I. THE CHARTER OF THE CITIES 65

II. THE COUNCIL OF THE PROVOSTS .... 82

III. ENTER A LUNATIC 102

BOOK III

I. THE MENTAL CONDITION OF ADAM WAYNE . 125

II. THE REMARKABLE MR. TURNBULL . . . 147

III. THE EXPERIMENT OF MR. BUCK . . . . 163

Contents

BOOK IV

Chapter Page

I. THE BATTLE OF THE LAMPS 189

H . THE CORRESPONDENT OF " THE COURT

JOURNAL" 208

III. THE GREAT ARMY OF SOUTH KENSING-
TON . . . . , 224

BOOK V

I. THE EMPIRE OF NOTTING HILL .... 259

II. THE LAST BATTLE 279

III. Two VOICES 291

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

IN THE DARK ENTRANCE THERE APPEARED A FLAMING

FIGURE .... Frontispiece

Facing page
ClTY MEN OUT ON ALL FOURS IN A FIELD COVERED

WITH VEAL CUTLETS . . I 6

'I'M KING OF THE CASTLE* . . .70

'I BRING HOMAGE TO MY KING* . I 04

MAP OF THE SEAT OF WAR . . . 1 90

KING AUBERON DESCENDED FROM THE OMNIBUS WITH

DIGNITY . . . . .220

'A FINE EVENING, SIR,' SAID THE CHEMIST . 264

' WAYNE, IT WAS ALL A JOKE' . . 296

BOOK I

THE NAPOLEON
OF NOTTING HILL

CHAPTER I — Introductory Remarks on the
Art of Prophecy

THE human race, to which so many of
my readers belong, has been playing
at children's games from the begin-
ning, and will probably do it till the end, which
is a nuisance for the few people who grow
up. And one of the games to which it is
most attached is called, "Keep to-morrow
dark," and which is also named (by the
rustics in Shropshire, I have no doubt) "Cheat
the Prophet." The players listen very care-
fully and respectfully to all that the clever
men have to say about what is to happen in
the next generation. The players then wait until
all the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely.
They then go and do something else. That is
all. For a race of simple tastes, however, it is
great fun.

For human beings, being children, have the
childish wilfulness and the childish secrecy. And
they never have from the beginning of the

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

world done what the wise men have seen to be
inevitable. They stoned the false prophets, it is
said; but they could have stoned true prophets
with a greater and juster enjoyment. Individu-
ally, men may present a more or less rational
appearance, eating, sleeping, and scheming. But
humanity as a whole is changeful, mystical,
fickle, delightful. Men are men, but Man is a
woman.

But in the beginning of the twentieth century
the game of Cheat the Prophet was made far
more difficult than it had ever been before.
The reason was, that there were so many
prophets and so many prophecies, that it was
difficult to elude all their ingenuities. When a
man did something free and frantic and entirely
his own, a horrible thought struck him after-
wards; it might have been predicted. When-
ever a duke climbed a lamp-post, when a dean
got drunk, he could not be really happy, he
could not be certain that he was not fulfilling some
prophecy. In the beginning of the twentieth
century you could not see the ground for clever
men. They were so common that a stupid
man was quite exceptional, and when they found
him, they followed him in crowds down the
street and treasured him up and gave him some
high post in the State. And all these clever

Introductory Remarks

men were at work giving accounts of what
would happen in the next age, all quite clear,
all quite keen-sighted and ruthless, and all quite
different. And it seemed that the good old
game of hoodwinking your ancestors could not
really be managed this time, because the ances-
tors neglected meat and sleep and practical poli-
tics, so that they might meditate day and
night on what their descendants would be likely
to do.

But the way the prophets of the twentieth
century went to work was this. They took
something or other that was certainly going on
in their time, and then said that it would go on
more and more until something extraordinary
happened. And very often they added that in
some odd place that extraordinary thing had
happened, and that it showed the signs of the
times.

Thus, for instance, there were Mr. H. G.
Wells and others, who thought that science
would take charge of the future; and just as the
motor-car was quicker than the coach, so some
lovely thing would be quicker than the motor-
car; and so on for ever. And there arose from
their ashes Dr. Ouilp, who said that a man
could be sent on his machine so fast round the
world that he could keep up a long chatty con-
is

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

versation in some old-world village by saying
a word of a sentence each time he came round.
And it was said that the experiment had been
tried on an apoplectic old major, who was sent
round the world so fast that there seemed to be
(to the inhabitants of some other star) a con-
tinuous band round the earth of white whiskers,
red complexion and tweeds — a thing like the ring
of Saturn.

Then there was the opposite school. There
was Mr. Edward Carpenter, who thought we
should in a very short time return to Nature,
and live simply and slowly as the animals do.
And Edward Carpenter was followed by James
Pickie, D.D. (of Pocahontas College), who said
that men were immensely improved by grazing,
or taking their food slowly and continuously,
after the manner of cows. And he said that he
had, with the most encouraging results, turned
city men out on all fours in a field covered with
veal cutlets. Then Tolstoy and the Humani-
tarians said that the world was growing more
merciful, and therefore no one would ever desire
to kill. And Mr. Mick not only became a vege-
tarian, but at length declared vegetarianism
doomed ("shedding," as he called it finely, "the
green blood of the silent animals"), and pre-
dicted that men in a better age would live on

CITY MEN OUT ON ALL FOURS IN A FIELD COVERED WITH
VEAL CUTLETS

Introductory Remarks

nothing but salt. And then came the pamphlet
from Oregon (where the thing was tried), the
pamphlet called "Why should Salt suffer?" and
there was more trouble.

And on the other hand, some people were
predicting that the lines of kinship would be-
come narrower and sterner. There was Mr.
Cecil Rhodes, who thought that the one thing of
the future was the British Empire, and that
there would be a gulf between those who were
of the Empire and those who were not, between
the Chinaman in Hong Kong and the Chinaman
outside, between the Spaniard on the Rock of
Gibraltar and the Spaniard off it, similar to the
gulf between man and the lower animals. And
in the same way his impetuous friend, Dr. Zoppi
("the Paul of Anglo-Saxonism"), carried it yet
further, and held that, as a result of this view,
cannibalism should be held to mean eating a
member of the Empire, not eating one of the
subject peoples, who should, he said, be killed
without needless pain. His horror at the idea
of eating a man in British Guiana showed how
they misunderstood his stoicism who thought
him devoid of feeling. He was, however, in a
hard position; as it was said that he had
attempted the experiment, and, living in London,
had to subsist entirely on Italian organ-grinders.

The Napoleon of dotting Hill

And his end was terrible, for just when he had
begun, Sir Paul Swiller read his great paper at
the Royal Society, proving that the savages were
not only quite right in eating their enemies, but
right on moral and hygienic grounds, since it
was true that the qualities of the enemy, when
eaten, passed into the eater. The notion that the
nature of an Italian organ-man was irrevocably
growing and burgeoning inside him was almost
more than the kindly old professor could bear.

There was Mr. Benjamin Kidd, who said
that the growing note of our race would be the
care for and knowledge of the future. His idea
was developed more powerfully by William
Borker, who wrote that passage which every
schoolboy knows by heart, about men in future
ages weeping by the graves of their descendants,
and tourists being shown over the scene of the
historic battle which was to take place some cen-
turies afterwards.

And Mr. Stead, too, was prominent, who
thought that England would in the twentieth
century be united to America; and his young
lieutenant, Graham Podge, who included the
states of France, Germany, and Russia in the
American Union, the State of Russia being
abbreviated to Ra.

There was Mr. Sidney Webb, also, who said
18

Introductory Remarks

that the future would see a continuously increas-
ing order and neatness in the life of the people,
and his poor friend Fipps, who went mad and
ran about the country with an axe, hacking-
branches off the trees whenever there were not
the same number on both sides.

All these clever men were prophesying with
every variety of ingenuity what would happen
soon, and they all did it in the same way, by
taking something they saw 'going strong,' as the
saying is, and carrying it as far as ever their
imagination could stretch. This, they said, was
the true and simple way of anticipating the
future. "Just as," said Dr. Pellkins, in a fine
passage, — "just as when we see a pig in a litter
larger than the other pigs, we know that by an
unalterable law of the Inscrutable it will some
day be larger than an elephant, — just as we know,
when we see weeds and dandelions growing
more and more thickly in a garden, that they
must, in spite of all our efforts, grow taller than
the chimney-pots and swallow the house from
sight, so we know and reverently acknowledge,
that when any power in human politics has shown
for any period of time any considerable activity,
it will go on until it reaches to the sky."

And it did certainly appear that the prophets
had put the people (engaged in the old game of

The Napoleon of dotting Hill

Cheat the Prophet), in a quite unprecedented
difficulty. It seemed really hard to do anything
without fulfilling some of their prophecies.

But there was, nevertheless, in the eyes of
labourers in the streets, of peasants in the fields,
of sailors and children, and especially women, a
strange look that kept the wise men in a perfect
fever of doubt. They could not fathom the
motionless mirth in their eyes. They still had
something up their sleeve; they were still playing
the game of Cheat the Prophet.

Then the wise men grew like wild things, and
swayed hither and thither, crying, "What can
it be? What can it be? What will London
be like a century hence ? Is there anything we have
not thought of? Houses upside down — more
hygienic, perhaps? Men walking on hands
— make feet flexible, don't you know? Moon
. . . motor-cars ... no heads . . ." And so
they swayed and wondered until they died and
were buried nicely.

Then the people went and did what they
liked. Let me no longer conceal the painful
truth. The people had cheated the prophets of
the twentieth century. When the curtain goes
up on this story, eighty years after the
present date, London is almost exactly like what
it is now.

CHAPTER II — The Man in Green

VERY few words are needed to explain
why London, a hundred years hence,
will be very like it is now, or rather,
since I must slip into a prophetic past, why
London, when my story opens, was very like
it was in those enviable days when I was still
alive.

The reason can be stated in one sentence. The
people had absolutely lost faith in revolutions.
All revolutions are doctrinal — such as the
French one, or the one that introduced Chris-
tianity. For it stands to common sense that
you cannot upset all existing things, customs,
and compromises, unless you believe in some-
thing outside them, something positive and
divine. Now, England, during this century, lost
all belief in this. It believed in a thing called
Evolution. And it said, "All theoretic changes
have ended in blood and ennui. If we change,
we must change slowly and safely, as the animals
do. Nature's revolutions are the only successful
ones. There has been no conservative reaction in
favour of tails."

And some things did change. Things that
were not much thought of dropped out of

The Napoleon of dotting Hill

sight. Things that had not often happened did
not happen at all. Thus, for instance, the
actual physical force ruling the country, the
soldiers and police, grew smaller and smaller,
and at last vanished almost to a point. The
people combined could have swept the few
policemen away in ten minutes: they did not,
because they did not believe it would do them
the least good. They had lost faith in revolu-
tions.

Democracy was dead; for no one minded
the governing class governing. England was
now practically a despotism, but not an
hereditary one. Some one in the official class
was made King. No one cared how: no one
cared who. He was merely an universal secre-
tary.

In this manner it happened that everything
in London was very quiet. That vague and
somewhat depressed reliance upon things hap-
pening as they have always happened, which is
with all Londoners a mood, had become an
assumed condition. There was really no reason
for any man doing anything but the thing he had
done the day before.

There was therefore no reason whatever why
the three young men who had always walked up
to their Government office together should not

, 22

The Man in Green

walk up to it together on this particular
wintry and cloudy morning. Everything in that
age had become mechanical, and Government
clerks especially. All those clerks assembled
regularly at their posts. Three of those clerks
always walked into town together. All the
neighbourhood knew them : two of them were
tall and one short. And on this particular
morning the short clerk was only a few seconds
late to join the other two as they passed his
gate: he could have overtaken them in three
strides ; he could have called after them easily. But
he did not.

For some reason that will never be under-
stood until all souls are judged (if they are ever
judged; the idea was at this time classed with
fetish worship) he did not join his two com-
panions, but walked steadily behind them. The
day was dull, their dress was dull, everything
was dull; but in some odd impulse he walked
through street after street, through district after
district, looking at the backs of the two men,
who would have swung round at the sound of
his voice. Now, there is a law written in the
darkest of the Books of Life, and it is this :
If you look at a thing nine hundred and
ninety-nine times, you are perfectly safe; if
you look at it the thousandth time, you are

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

in frightful danger of seeing it for the first
time.

So the short Government official looked at the
coat-tails of the tall Government officials, and
through street after street, and round corner after
corner, saw only coat-tails, coat-tails, and again
coat-tails — when, he did not in the least know
why, something happened to his eyes.

Two black dragons were walking backwards
in front of him. Two black dragons were look-
ing at him with evil eyes. The dragons were
walking backwards it was true, but they kept
their eyes fixed on him none the less. The eyes
which he saw were, in truth, only the two buttons
at the back of a frock-coat: perhaps some
traditional memory of their meaningless character
gave this half-witted prominence to their
gaze. The slit between the tails was the nose-
line of the monster: whenever the tails flapped
in the winter wind the dragons licked their
lips. It was only a momentary fancy, but the
small clerk found it imbedded in his soul ever
afterwards. He never could again think of men
in frock-coats except as dragons walking back-
wards. He explained afterwards, quite tactfully
and nicely, to his two official friends, that
while feeling an inexpressible regard for each
of them he could not seriously regard the face

The Man in Green

of either of them as anything but a kind of
tail. It was, he admitted, a handsome tail — a
tail elevated in the air. But if, he said, any
true friend of theirs wished to see their faces,
to look into the eyes of their soul, that friend
must be allowed to walk reverently round
behind them, so as to see them from the rear.
There he would see the two black dragons with
the blind eyes.

But when first the two black dragons sprang
out of the fog upon the small clerk, they had
merely the effect of all miracles — they changed
the universe. He discovered the fact that all
romantics know — that adventures happen on
dull days, and not on sunny ones. When the
chord of monotony is stretched most tight, then
it breaks with a sound like song. He had scarcely
noticed the weather before, but with the four dead
eyes glaring at him he looked round and realised
the strange dead day.

The morning was wintry and dim, not misty,
but darkened with that shadow of cloud or snow
which steeps everything in a green or copper
twilight. The light there is on such a day seems
not so much to come from the clear heavens as
to be a phosphorescence clinging to the shapes
themselves. The load of heaven and the clouds
is like a load of waters, and the men move like

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

fishes, feeling that they are on the floor of a sea.
Everything in a London street completes the
fantasy; the carriages and cabs themselves
resemble deep-sea creatures with eyes of flame.
He had been startled at first to meet two dragons.
Now he found he was among deep-sea dragons
possessing the deep sea.

The two young men in front were like the
small young man himself, well-dressed. The lines
of their frock-coats and silk hats had that luxuri-
ant severity which makes the modern fop, hideous
as he is, a favourite exercise of the modern
draughtsman ; that element which Mr. Max Beer-
bohm has admirably expressed in speaking of
"certain congruities of dark cloth and the rigid
perfection of linen."

They walked with the gait of an affected
snail, and they spoke at the longest intervals,
dropping a sentence at about every sixth lamp-
post.

They crawled on past the lamp-posts; their
mien was so immovable that a fanciful descrip-
tion might almost say, that the lamp-posts
crawled past the men, as in a dream. Then
the small man suddenly ran after them and
said —

"I want to get my hair cut. I say, do you
know a little shop anywhere where they cut your

The Man in Green

hair properly ? I keep on having my hair cut, but
it keeps on growing again."

One of the tall men looked at him with the air
of a pained naturalist.

"Why, here is a little place," cried the small
man, with a sort of imbecile cheerfulness, as the
bright bulging window of a fashionable toilet-
saloon glowed abruptly out of the foggy twilight.
"Do you know, I often find hairdressers when
I walk about London. I'll lunch with you at Cicco-
nani's. You know, I'm awfully fond of hair-
dressers' shops. They're miles better than those
nasty butchers'." And he disappeared into the
doorway.

The man called James continued to gaze after
him, a monocle screwed into his eye.

"What the devil do you make of that fellow ?"
he asked his companion, a pale young man with a
high nose.

The pale young man reflected conscientiously
for some minutes, and then said —

"Had a knock on his head when he was a kid,
I should think."

"No, I don't think it's that," replied the Hon-
ourable James Barker. "I've sometimes fancied
he was a sort of artist, Lambert."

"Bosh!" cried Mr. Lambert, briefly.

"I admit I can't make him out," resumed
27

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

Barker, abstractedly; "he never opens his mouth
without saying something so indescribably
half-witted that to call him a fool seems
the very feeblest attempt at characterisation.
But there's another thing about him that's rather
funny. Do you know that he has the one
collection of Japanese lacquer in Europe? Have
you ever seen his books? All Greek poets
and mediaeval French and that sort of
thing. Have you ever been in his rooms?
It's like being inside an amethyst. And he
moves about in all that and talks like — like a
turnip."

"Well, damn all books. Your blue books as
well," said the ingenuous Mr. Lambert, with a
friendly simplicity. "You ought to under-
stand such things. What do you make of
him?"

"He's beyond me," returned Barker. "But if
you asked me for my opinion, I should say he
was a man with a taste for nonsense, as they
call it — artistic fooling, and all that kind of
thing. And I seriously believe that he has
talked nonsense so much that he has half
bewildered his own mind and doesn't know
the difference between sanity and insanity.
He has gone round the mental world, so to
speak, and found the place where the East and

The Man in Green

the West are one, and extreme idiocy is as good
as sense. But I can't explain these psychological
games."

"You can't explain them to me," replied Mr.
Wilfrid Lambert, with candour.

As they passed up the long streets towards
their restaurant the copper twilight cleared
slowly to a pale yellow, and by the time they
reached it they stood discernible in a toler-
able winter daylight. The Honourable James
Barker, one of the most powerful officials in
the English Government (by this time a
rigidly official one), was a lean and elegant
young man, with a blank handsome face and
bleak blue eyes. He had a great amount of
intellectual capacity, of that peculiar kind which
raises a man from throne to throne and lets him
die loaded with honours without having either
amused or enlightened the mind of a single
man. Wilfrid Lambert, the youth with the nose
which appeared to impoverish the rest of his
face, had also contributed little to the enlargement
of the human spirit, but he had the honourable
excuse of being a fool.

Lambert would have been called a silly
man; Barker, with all his cleverness, might
have been called a stupid man. But mere silliness
and stupidity sank into insignificance in

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

the presence of the awful and mysterious
treasures of foolishness apparently stored up in
the small figure that stood waiting for them
outside Cicconani's. The little man, whose
name was Auberon Quin, had an appearance
compounded of a baby and an owl. His round
head, round eyes, seemed to have been designed
by nature playfully with a pair of compasses.
His flat dark hair and preposterously long frock-
coat gave him something of the look of a
child's "Noah." When he entered a room of
strangers, they mistook him for a small boy, and
wanted to take him on their knees, until he spoke,
when they perceived that a boy would have been
more intelligent.

"I have been waiting quite a long time," said
Quin, mildly. "It's awfully funny I should see
you coming up the street at last."

"Why?" asked Lambert, staring. "You told
us to come here yourself."

"My mother used to tell people to come to
places," said the sage.

They were about to turn into the restaurant
with a resigned air, when their eyes were caught
by something in the street. The weather, though
cold and blank, was now quite clear and across
the dull brown of the wood pavement and between
the dull grey terraces was moving something not

The Man in Green

to be seen for miles around — not to be seen
perhaps at that time in England — a man dressed
in bright colours. A small crowd hung on the
man's heels.

He was a tall stately man, clad in a military
uniform of brilliant green, splashed with great
silver facings. From the shoulder swung a
short green furred cloak, somewhat like that of
a Hussar, the lining of which gleamed every now
and then with a kind of tawny crimson. His
breast glittered with medals; round his neck was
the red ribbon and star of some foreign order;
and a long straight sword, with a blazing hilt,
trailed and clattered along the pavement. At
this time the pacific and utilitarian development
of Europe had relegated all such customs to
the Museums. The only remaining force, the
small but well-organised police, were attired in
a sombre and hygienic manner. But even
those who remembered the last Life Guards and
Lancers who disappeared in 1912 must have
known at a glance that this was not, and never
had been, an English uniform; and this convic-
tion would have been heightened by the yellow
aquiline face, like Dante carved in bronze, which
rose, crowned with white hair, out of the green
military collar, a keen and distinguished, but not
an English face.

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

The magnificence with which the green-clad
gentleman walked down the centre of the road
would be something difficult to express in
human language. For it was an ingrained
simplicity and arrogance, something in the mere
carriage of the head and body, which made ordi-
nary moderns in the street stare after him; but
it had comparatively little to do with actual
conscious gestures or expression. In the matter
of these merely temporary movements, the
man appeared to be rather worried and
inquisitive, but he was inquisitive with the
inquisitiveness of a despot and worried as with
the responsibilities of a god. The men who
lounged and wondered behind him followed
partly with an astonishment at his brilliant
uniform, that is to say, partly because of that
instinct which makes us all follow one who looks
like a madman, but far more because of that
instinct which makes all men follow (and wor-
ship) any one who chooses to behave like a king.
He had to so sublime an extent that great quality
of royalty — an almost imbecile unconsciousness
of everybody, that people went after him as they
do after kings — to see what would be the first
thing or person he would take notice of. And
all the time, as we have said, in spite of his quiet
splendour, there was an air about him as if

The Man in Green

he were looking for somebody; an expression of
inquiry.

Suddenly that expression of inquiry vanished,
none could tell why, and was replaced by an
expression of contentment. Amid the rapt
attention of the mob of idlers, the magnificent
green gentleman deflected himself from his direct
course down the centre of the road and walked
to one side of it. He came to a halt opposite to
a large poster of Colman's Mustard erected on a
wooden hoarding. His spectators almost held
their breath.

He took from a small pocket in his uniform
a little penknife; with this he made a slash at
the stretched paper. Completing the rest of the
operation with his fingers, he tore off a strip or
rag of paper, yellow in colour and wholly irregu-
lar in outline. Then for the first time the great
being addressed his adoring onlookers —

"Can any one," he said, with a pleasing foreign
accent, "lend me a pin?"

Mr. Lambert, who happened to be nearest, and
who carried innumerable pins for the purpose of
attaching innumerable buttonholes, lent him one,
which was received with extravagant but dignified
bows, and hyperboles of thanks.

The gentleman in green, then, with every
appearance of being gratified, and even puffed up,

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

pinned the piece of yellow paper to the green silk
and silver-lace adornments of his breast. Then
he turned his eyes round again, searching and
unsatisfied.

"Anything else I can do, sir?" asked Lambert,
with the absurd politeness of the Englishman
when once embarrassed.

"Red," said the stranger, vaguely, "red."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I beg yours also, Senor," said the stranger,
bowing. "I was wondering whether any of you
had any red about you."

"Any red about us? — well really — no, I don't
think I have — I used to carry a red bandanna
once, but — "

"Barker," asked Auberon Quin, suddenly,
"where's your red cockatoo? Where's your red
cockatoo ?"

"What do you mean?" asked Barker, desper-
ately. "What cockatoo? You've never seen me
with any cockatoo."

"I know," said Auberon, vaguely mollified.
"Where's it been all the time?"

Barker swung round, not without resent-
ment.

"I am sorry, sir," he said, shortly but civilly,
"none of us seem to have anything red to lend
you. But why, if one may ask — "

The Man in Green

"I thank you, Senor, it is nothing. I can, since
there is nothing else, fulfil my own require-
ments."

And standing for a second of thought with
the penknife in his hand, he stabbed his left palm.
The blood fell with so full a stream that it
struck the stones without dripping. The foreigner
pulled out his handkerchief and tore a piece from
it with his teeth. The rag was immediately; soaked
in scarlet.

"Since you are so generous, Senor," he said,
"another pin, perhaps."

Lambert held one out, with eyes protruding
like a frog's.

The red linen was pinned beside the yellow
paper, and the foreigner took off his hat.

"I have to thank you all, gentlemen," he said;
and wrapping the remainder of the handkerchief
round his bleeding hand, he resumed his walk with
an overwhelming stateliness.

While all the rest paused, in some disorder,
little Mr. Auberon Quin ran after the stranger
and stopped him, with hat in hand. Considerably
to everybody's astonishment, he addressed him
in the purest Spanish —

"Senor," he said in that language, "pardon a
hospitality, perhaps indiscreet, towards one who
appears to be a distinguished, but a solitary guest

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

in London. Will you do me and my friends, with
whom you have held some conversation, the
honour of lunching with us at the adjoining res-
taurant?"

The man in the green uniform had turned a
fiery colour of pleasure at the mere sound of his
own language, and he accepted the invitation with
that profusion of bows which so often shows, in
the case of the Southern races, the falsehood of
the notion that ceremony has nothing to do with
feeling.

"Sefior," he said, "your language is my own;
but all my love for my people shall not lead me
to deny to yours the possession of so chivalrous
an entertainer. Let me say that the tongue is
Spanish but the heart English." And he passed
with the rest into Cicconani's.

"Now, perhaps," said Barker, over the fish and
sherry, intensely polite, but burning with curi-
osity, "perhaps it would be rude of me to ask
why you did that?"

"Did what, Sefior ?" asked the guest, who spoke
English quite well, though in a manner indefinably
American.

"Well," said the Englishman, in some confu-
sion, "I mean tore a strip off a hoarding and
... er ... cut yourself . . . and . . ."

"To tell you that, Senor," answered the other,
36

The Man in Green

with a certain sad pride, "involves merely telling
you who I am. I am Juan del Fuego, President
of Nicaragua,"

The manner with which the President of
Nicaragua leant back and drank his sherry
showed that to him this explanation covered
all the facts observed and a great deal more.
Barker's brow, however, was still a little
clouded.

"And the yellow paper," he began, with anxious
friendliness, "and the red rag . . ."

"The yellow paper and the red rag," said
Fuego, with indescribable grandeur, "are the
colours of Nicaragua."

"But Nicaragua . . ." began Barker, with
great hesitation, "Nicaragua is no longer
a ..."

"Nicaragua has been conquered like Athens.
Nicaragua has been annexed like Jerusalem,"
cried the old man, with amazing fire. "The
Yankee and the German and the brute powers
of modernity have trampled it with the hoofs of
oxen. But Nicaragua is not dead. Nicaragua is
an idea."

Auberon Quin suggested timidly, "A brilliant
idea."

"Yes," said the foreigner, snatching at the
word. "You are right, generous Englishman.

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

An idea brilliant, a burning thought. Sefior, you
asked me why, in my desire to see the colours
of my country, I snatched at paper and blood.
Can you not understand the ancient sanctity of
colours? The Church has her symbolic colours.
And think of what colours mean to us
— think of the position of one like myself,
who can see nothing but those two col-
ours, nothing but the red and the yellow. To
me all shapes are equal, all common and noble
things are in a democracy of combination.
Wherever there is a field of marigolds and the
red cloak of an old woman, there is Nicaragua.
Wherever there is a field of poppies and a
yellow patch of sand, there is Nicaragua.
Wherever there is a lemon and a red sunset,
there is my country. Wherever I see a red
pillar-box and a yellow sunset, there my heart
beats. Blood and a splash of mustard can be my
heraldry. If there be yellow mud and red mud
in the same ditch, it is better to me than white
stars."

"And if," said Quin, with equal enthusiasm,
"there should happen to be yellow wine and red
wine at the same lunch, you could not confine
yourself to sherry. Let me order some Burgundy,
and complete, as it were, a sort of Nicaraguan
heraldry in your inside."

The Man in Green

Barker was fiddling with his knife, and was
evidently making up his mind to say something,
with the intense nervousness of the amiable
Englishman.

"I am to understand, then," he said at last,
with a cough, "that you, ahem, were the
President of Nicaragua when it made its — er —
one must, of course, agree — its quite heroic resist-
ance to — er — "

The ex-President of Nicaragua waved his
hand.

"You need not hesitate in speaking to- me," he
said. "I am quite fully aware that the whole ten-
dency of the world of to-day is against Nicaragua
and against me. I shall not consider it any dimin-
ution of your evident courtesy if you say what
you think of the misfortunes that have laid my
republic in ruins."

Barker looked immeasurably relieved and
gratified.

"You are most generous, President," he said,
with some hesitation over the title, "and I will
take advantage of your generosity to express the
doubts which, I must confess, \ve moderns have
about such things as — er — the Nicaraguan inde-
pendence."

"So your sympathies are," said Del Fuego,
quite calmly, "with the big nation which — "

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

"Pardon me, pardon me, President," said
Barker, warmly; "my sympathies are with no
nation. You misunderstand, I think, the
modern intellect. We do not disapprove of the
fire and extravagance of such commonwealths as
yours only to become more extravagant on a
larger scale. We do not condemn Nicaragua
because we think Britain ought to be more
Nicaraguan. We do not discourage small
nationalities because we wish large nationalities
to have all their smallness, all their uniformity
of outlook, all their exaggeration of spirit.
If I differ with the greatest respect from
your Nicaraguan enthusiasm, it is not because a
nation or ten nations were against you; it is
because civilisation was against you. We moderns
believe in a great cosmopolitan civilisation, one
which shall include all the talents of all the
absorbed peoples — "

"The Sefior will forgive me," said the
President. "May I ask the Sefior how, under
ordinary circumstances, he catches a wild
horse?"

"I never catch a wild horse," replied Barker,
with dignity.

"Precisely," said the other; "and there ends
your absorption of the talents. That is what I
complain of your cosmopolitanism. When you

The Man in Green

say you want all peoples to unite, you really
mean that you want all peoples to unite to
learn the tricks of your people. If the
Bedouin Arab does not know how to read,
some English missionary or schoolmaster must
be sent to teach him to read, but no one ever
says, 'This schoolmaster does not know how to
ride on a camel; let us pay a Bedouin to teach
him.' You say your civilisation will include
all talents. Will it? Do you really mean to
say that at the moment when the Esquimaux
has learnt to vote for a County Council, you
will have learnt to spear a walrus? I recur to
the example I gave. In Nicaragua we had a
way of catching wild horses — by lassooing the
fore feet — which was supposed to be the best in
South America. If you are going to include all
the talents, go and do it. If not, permit me
to say, what I have always said, that some-
thing went from the world when Nicaragua was
civilised."

"Something, perhaps," replied Barker, "but
that something a mere barbarian dexterity. I do
not know that I could chip flints as well as a
primeval man, but I know that civilisation can
make these knives which are better, and I trust
to civilisation."

"You have good authority," answered the

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

Nicaraguan. "Many clever men like you have
trusted to civilisation. Many clever Babylo-
nians, many clever Egyptians, many clever
men at the end of Rome. Can you tell
me, in a world that is flagrant with the failures
of civilisation, what there is particularly immortal
about yours?"

"I think you do not quite understand,
President, what ours is," answered Barker.
"You judge it rather as if England was still a
poor and pugnacious island; you have been
long out of Europe. Many things have
happened."

"And what," asked the other, "would you call
the summary of those things ?"

"The summary of those things," answered
Barker, with great animation, "is that we are
rid of the superstitions, and in becoming so we
have not merely become rid of the superstitions
which have been most frequently and most
enthusiastically so described. The super-
stition of big nationalities is bad, but the
superstition of small nationalities is worse. The
superstition of reverencing our own country is
bad, but the superstition of reverencing other
people's countries is worse. It is so everywhere,
and in a hundred ways. The superstition
of monarchy is bad, and the superstition of ari-

The Man in Green

stocracy is bad, but the superstition of democracy
is the worst of all."

The old gentleman opened his eyes with some
surprise.

"Are you, then," he said, "no longer a democ-
racy in England ?"

Barker laughed.

"The situation invites paradox," he said. "We
are, in a sense, the purest democracy. We have
become a despotism. Have you not noticed how
continually in history democracy becomes despo-
tism ? People call it the decay of democracy. It
is simply its fulfilment. Why take the trouble
to number and register and enfranchise all the
innumerable John Robinsons, when you can take
one John Robinson with the same intellect or lack
of intellect as all the rest, and have done with it ?
The old idealistic republicans used to found de-
mocracy on the idea that all men were equally
intelligent. Believe me, the sane and enduring-
democracy is founded on the fact that all men are
equally idiotic. Why should we not choose out
of them one as much as another? All
that we want for Government is a man
not criminal and insane, who can rapidly look
over some petitions and sign some proclamations.
To think what time was wasted in arguing
about the House of Lords, Tories saying it

The Napoleon of dotting Hill

ought to be preserved because it was clever, and
Radicals saying it ought to be destroyed
because it was stupid, and all the time no
one saw that it was right because it was stupid,
because that chance mob of ordinary men
thrown there by accident of blood, were a
great democratic protest against the Lower
House, against the eternal insolence of the
aristocracy of talents. We have established now
in England, the thing towards which all systems
have dimly groped, the dull popular despo-
tism without illusions. We want one man at the
head of our State, not because he is bril-
liant or virtuous, but because he is one
man and not a chattering crowd. To avoid the
possible chance of hereditary diseases or such
things, we have abandoned hereditary monarchy.
The King of England is chosen like a juryman
upon an official rotation list. Beyond that the
whole system is quietly despotic, and we have not
found it raise a murmur."

"Do you really mean," asked the President,
incredulously, "that you choose any ordinary man
that comes to hand and make him despot
— that you trust to the chance of some alphabeti-
cal list. . . ."

"And why not?" cried Barker. "Did not
half the historical nations trust to the chance of

The Man in Green

the eldest sons of eldest sons, and did not half
of them get on tolerably well? To have
a perfect system is impossible; to have a
system is indispensable. All hereditary mon-
archies were a matter of luck: so are
alphabetical monarchies. Can you find a deep
philosophical meaning in the difference between
the Stuarts and the Hanoverians? Believe me,
I will undertake to find a deep philosophical
meaning in the contrast between the dark
tragedy of the A's, and the solid success of the
B's." "

"And you risk it?" asked the other. "Though
the man may be a tyrant or a cynic or a
criminal ?"

"We risk it," answered Barker, with a perfect
placidity. "Suppose he is a tyrant — he is still
a check on a hundred tyrants. Suppose he is a
cynic, it is to his interest to govern well. Suppose
he is a criminal — by removing poverty and sub-
stituting power, we put a check on his criminality.
In short, by substituting despotism we have put
a total check on one criminal and a partial check
on all the rest."

The Nicaraguan old gentleman leaned over
with a queer expression in his eyes.

"My church, sir," he said, "has taught me to
respect faith. I do not wish to speak with any

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

disrespect of yours, however fantastic. But do
you really mean that you will trust to the ordinary
man, the man who may happen to come next, as a
good despot?"

"I do," said Barker, simply. "He may not be
a good man. But he will be a good despot. For
when he comes to a mere business routine of
government he will endeavour to do ordinary
iustice. Do we not assume the same thing in a
jury?"

The old President smiled.

"I don't know," he said, "that I have any
particular objection in detail to your excellent
scheme of Government. My only objection is a
quite personal one. It is, that if I were asked
whether I would belong to it, I should ask first
of all, if I was not permitted, as an alternative,
to be a toad in a ditch. That is all. You cannot
argue with the choice of the soul."

"Of the soul," said Barker, knitting his brows,
"I cannot pretend to say anything, but speaking
in the interests of the public — "

Mr. Auberon Quin rose suddenly to his
feet.

"If you'll excuse me, gentlemen," he said,
"I will step out for a moment into the air."

"I'm so sorry, Auberon," said Lambert, good-
naturedly; "do you feel bad?"

The Man in Green

"Not bad exactly," said Auberon, with self-
restraint; "rather good, if anything. Strangely
and richly good. The fact is I want to reflect a
little on those beautiful words that have just been
uttered. 'Speaking', yes, that was the phrase,
'speaking in the interests of the public.' One
cannot get the honey from such things without
being alone for a little."

"Is he really off his chump, do you think?"
asked Lambert.

The old President looked after him with queerly
vigilant eyes.

"He is a man, I think," he said, "who cares
for nothing but a joke. He is a dangerous
man."

Lambert laughed in the act of lifting some
maccaroni to his mouth.

"Dangerous !" he said. "You don't know little
Quin, sir !"

"Every man is dangerous," said the old man
without moving, "who cares only for one thing.
I was once dangerous myself."

And with a pleasant smile he finished his coffee
and rose, bowing profoundly, passed out into the
fog, which had again grown dense and sombre.
Three days afterwards they heard that he had
died quietly in lodgings in Soho.

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

Drowned somewhere else in the dark sea of
fog was a little figure shaking and quaking,
with what might at first sight have seemed
terror or ague: but which was really that
strange malady, a lonely laughter. He was
repeating over and over to himself with a rich
accent — "But speaking in the interests of the
public. . . ."

CHAPTER III — The Hill of Humour

6 £ ~~f N a little square garden of yellow roses,
beside the sea," said Auberon Quin,
"there was a Nonconformist minister
who had never been to Wimbledon. His
family did not understand his sorrow or the
strange look in his eyes. But one day they
repented their neglect, for they heard that a body
had been found on the shore, battered, but
wearing patent leather boots. As it happened,
it turned out not to be the minister at all.
But in the dead man's pocket there was a return
ticket to Maidstone."

There was a short pause as Quin and his friends
Barker and Lambert went swinging on through
the slushy grass of Kensington Gardens. Then
Auberon resumed.

"That story," he said reverently, "is the test
of humour."

They walked on further and faster, wading
through higher grass as they began to climb a
slope.

"I perceive," continued Auberon, "that you
have passed the test, and consider the anecdote
excruciatingly funny; since you say nothing.
Only coarse humour is received with pot-house

The Napoleon of Netting Hill

applause. The great anecdote is received in
silence, like a benediction. You felt pretty bene-
dicted, didn't you, Barker ?"

"I saw the point," said Barker, somewhat
loftily.

"Do you know," said Quin, with a sort of idiot
gaiety, "I have lots of stories as good as that.
Listen to this one."

And he slightly cleared his throat.

"Dr. Polycarp was, as you all know, an
unusually sallow bimetallist. 'There/ people
of wide experience would say, 'There goes the
sallowest bimetallist in Cheshire/ Once this was
said so that he overheard it: it was said by an
actuary, under a sunset of mauve and grey.
Polycarp turned upon him. 'Sallow!' he cried
fiercely, 'sallow! Quis tulerit Gracchos de sedi-
tione querentes' It was said that no actuary
ever made game of Dr. Polycarp again."

Barker nodded with a simple sagacity. Lam-
bert only grunted.

"Here is another," continued the insatiable
Quin. "In a hollow of the grey-green hills of
rainy Ireland, lived an old, old woman, whose
uncle was always Cambridge at the Boat Race.
But in her grey-green hollows, she knew nothing
of this: she didn't know that there was a Boat
Race. Also she did not know that she had an

The Hill of Humour

uncle. She had heard of nobody at all, except
of George the First, of whom she had heard (I
know not why), and in whose historical
memory she put her simple trust. And by and
by, in God's good time, it was discovered that
this uncle of hers was not really her uncle, and
they came and told her so. She smiled
through her tears, and said only, 'Virtue is its
own reward.' '

Again there was a silence, and then Lambert
said —

"It seems a bit mysterious."

"Mysterious!" cried the other. "The true
humour is mysterious. Do you not realise the
chief incident of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries ?"

"And what's that?" asked Lambert, shortly.

"It is very simple," replied the other. "Hitherto
it was the ruin of a joke that people did not
see it. Now it is the sublime victory of a joke
that people do not see it. Humour, my friends,
is the one sanctity remaining to mankind. It is
the one thing you are thoroughly afraid of. Look
at that tree."

His interlocutors looked vaguely towards a
beech that leant out towards them from the ridge
of the hill.

"If," said Mr. Quin, "I were to say that you
51

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

did not see the great truths of science exhibited
by that tree, though they stared any man
of intellect in the face, what would you
think or say? You would merely regard me
as a pedant with some unimportant theory
about vegetable cells. If I were to say that you
did not see in that tree the vile misman-
agement of local politics, you would dismiss
me as a Socialist crank with some particular fad
about public parks. If I were to say that you
were guilty of the supreme blasphemy of look-
ing at that tree and not seeing in it a new
religion, a special revelation of God, you would
simply say I was a mystic, and think no more
about me. But if" — and he lifted a pontifical
hand — "if I say that you cannot see the humour
of that tree, and that I see the humour
of it — my God! you will roll about at my
feet."

He paused a moment, and then resumed.

"Yes; a sense of humour, a weird and
delicate sense of humour, is the new religion of
mankind! It is towards that men will strain
themselves with the asceticism of saints.
Exercises, spiritual exercises, will be set in it. It
will be asked, 'Can you see the humour of this
iron railing?' or 'Can you see the humour of
this field of corn? Can you see the humour of

The Hill of Humour

the stars? Can you see the humour of the sun-
sets ?' How often I have laughed myself to sleep
over a violet sunset."

"Quite so," said Mr. Barker, with an intelligent
embarrassment.

"Let me tell you another story. How often
it happens that the M.P.'s for Essex are less
punctual than one would suppose. The least
punctual Essex M.P., perhaps, was James
Wilson, who said, in the very act of plucking a
poppy — "

Lambert suddenly faced round and struck his
stick into the ground in a defiant attitude.

"Auberon," he said, "chuck it. I won't stand
it. It's all bosh."

Both men stared at him, for there was some-
thing very explosive about the words, as if
they had been corked up painfully for a long
time.

"You have," began Quin, "no—"

"I don't care a curse," said Lambert, violently,
"whether I have 'a delicate sense of humour' or
not. I won't stand it. It's all a confounded
fraud. There's no joke in those infernal tales
at all. You know there isn't as well as I
do."

"Well," replied Quin, slowly, "it is true that
I, with my rather gradual mental processes, did

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

not see any joke in them. But the finer sense of
Barker perceived it."

Barker turned a fierce red, but continued to
stare at the horizon.

"You ass," said Lambert; "why can't you be
like other people ? Why can't you say something
really funny, or hold your tongue ? The man who
sits on his hat in a pantomime is a long sight
funnier than you are."

Quin regarded him steadily. They had reached
the top of the ridge and the wind struck their
faces.

"Lambert," said Auberon, "you are a great and
good man, though I'm hanged if you look it. You
are more. You are a great revolutionist or
deliverer of the world, and I look forward to
seeing you carved in marble between Luther
and Danton, if possible in your present atti-
tude, the hat slightly on one side. I said as I
came up the hill that the new humour was the
last of the religions. You have made it the last
of the superstitions. But let me give you a very
serious warning. Be careful how you ask
me to do anything outre, to imitate the man
in the pantomime, and to sit on my hat. Because
I am a man whose soul has been emptied
of all pleasures but folly. And for twopence I'd
do it."

The Hill of Humour

"Do it then," said Lambert, swinging his stick
impatiently. "It would be funnier than the bosh
you and Barker talk."

Quin, standing on the top of the hill, stretched
his hand out towards the main avenue of Kensing-
ton Gardens.

"Two hundred yards away," he said, "are all
your fashionable acquaintances with nothing on
earth to do but to stare at each other and at
us. We are standing upon an elevation under
the open sky, a peak as it were of fantasy, a
Sinai of humour. We are in a great pulpit or
platform, lit up with sunlight, and half London
can see us. Be careful how you suggest things
to me. For there is in me a madness which goes
beyond martyrdom, the madness of an utterly
idle man."

"I don't know what you are talking about,"
said Lambert, contemptuously. "I only know I'd
rather you stood on your silly head, than talked
so much."

"Auberon! for goodness' sake . . . ' cried
Barker, springing forward; but he was too late.
Faces from all the benches and avenues were
turned in their direction. Groups stopped
and small crowds collected; and the sharp
sunlight picked out the whole scene in blue,
green and black, like a picture in a child's toy-

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

book. And on the top of the small hill Mr.
Auberon Quin stood with considerable athletic
neatness upon his head, and waved his patent-
leather boots in the air.

"For God's sake, Quin, get up, and don't
be an idiot," cried Barker, wringing his
hands; "we shall have the whole town
here."

"Yes, get up, get up, man," said Lambert,
amused and annoyed. "I was only fooling; get
up."

Auberon did so with a bound, and flinging his
hat higher than the trees, proceeded to hop about
on one leg with a serious expression. Barker
stamped wildly.

"Oh, let's get home, Barker, and leave him,"
said Lambert; "some of your proper and
correct police will look after him. Here they
come !"

Two grave-looking men in quiet uniforms came
up the hill towards them. One held a paper in
his hand.

"There he is, officer," said Lambert, cheerfully:
"we ain't responsible for him."

The officer looked at the capering Mr. Quin
with a quiet eye.

"We have not come, gentlemen," he said,
"about what I think you are alluding to. We

The Hill of Humour

have come from head-quarters to announce the
selection of His Majesty the King. It is the
rule, inherited from the old regime, that the
news should be brought to the new
Sovereign immediately, wherever he is; so
we have followed you across Kensington
Gardens."

Barker's eyes were blazing in his pale face.
He was consumed with ambition throughout
his life. With a certain dull magnanimity of
the intellect he had really believed in the
chance method of selecting despots. But this
sudden suggestion, that the selection might
have fallen upon him, unnerved him with
pleasure.

"Which of us," he began, and the respectful
official interrupted him.

"Not you, sir, I am sorry to say. If I
may be permitted to say so, we know your
services to the Government, and should be
very thankful if it were. The choice has
fallen . . ."

"God bless my soul!" said Lambert, jumping
back two paces. "Not me. Don't say I'm auto-
crat of all the Russias."

"No, sir," said the officer, with a slight cough
and a glance towards Auberon, who
was at that moment putting his head

57.

The Napoleon of dotting Hill

between his legs and making a noise like a
cow; "the gentleman whom we have to
congratulate seems at the moment — er— er —
occupied."

"Not Quin!" shrieked Barker, rushing up
to him; "it can't be. Auberon, for God's sake
pull yourself together. You've been made
King!"

With his head still upside down between his
legs, Mr. Quin answered modestly —

"I am not worthy. I cannot reasonably claim
to equal the great men who have previously
swayed the sceptre of Britain. Perhaps the only
peculiarity that I can claim is that I am probably
the first monarch that ever spoke out his soul to
the people of England with his head and
body in this position. This may in some sense
give me, to quote a poem that I wrote in my
youth —

A nobler office on the earth

Than valour, power of brain, or birth

Could give the warrior kings of old.

The intellect clarified by this posture — "

Lambert and Barker made a kind of rush at

him.

"Don't you understand?" cried Lambert.

"It's not a joke. They've really made you

The Hill of Humour

King. By gosh! they must have rum
taste."

"The great Bishops of the Middle Ages,"
said Quin, kicking his legs in the air, as he was
dragged up more or less upside down,
"were in the habit of refusing the honour of
election three times and then accepting it. A
mere matter of detail separates me from those
great men. I will accept the post three times and
refuse it afterwards. Oh! I will toil for you,
my faithful people ! You shall have a banquet of
humour."

By this time he had been landed the right way
up, and the two men were still trying in
vain to impress him with the gravity of the
situation.

"Did you not tell me, Wilfrid Lambert," he
said, "that I should be of more public value if
I adopted a more popular form of humour ? And
when should a popular form of humour be more
firmly riveted upon me than now, when I have
become the darling of a whole people?
Officer," he continued, addressing the
startled messenger, "are there no ceremonies to
celebrate my entry into the city ?"

"Ceremonies," began the official, with embar-
rassment, "have been more or less neglected for
some little time, and — "

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

Auberon Quin began gradually to take off his
coat.

"All ceremony," he said, "consists in the
reversal of the obvious. Thus men, when they
wish to be priests or judges, dress up like women.
Kindly help me on with this coat." And he held
it out.

"But, your Majesty," said the officer, after
a moment's bewilderment and manipulation,
"you're putting it on with the tails in
front."

"The reversal of the obvious," said the
King, calmly, "is as near as we can come
to ritual with our imperfect apparatus. Lead
on."

The rest of that afternoon and evening was
to Barker and Lambert a nightmare, which they
could not properly realise or recall. The King,
with his coat on the wrong way, went towards
the streets that were awaiting him, and the old
Kensington Palace which was the Royal resi-
dence. As he passed small groups of men,
the groups turned into crowds, and gave forth
sounds which seemed strange in welcoming an
autocrat. Barker walked behind, his brain
reeling, and, as the crowds grew thicker and
thicker, the sounds became more and more un-
usual. And when he had reached the great

The Hill of Humour

market-place opposite the church, Barker knew
that he had reached it, though he was roods
behind, because a cry went up such as had
never before greeted any of the kings of the
earth.

BOOK II

CHAPTER I — The Charter of the Cities

LAMBERT was standing bewildered out-
side the door of the King's apart-
ments amid the scurry of astonish-
ment and ridicule. He was just passing out
into the street, in a dazed manner, when James
Barker dashed by him.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"To stop all this foolery, of course,"
replied Barker; and he disappeared into the
room.

He entered it headlong, slamming the door,
and slapping his incomparable silk hat on the
table. His mouth opened, but before he could
speak, the King said —

"Your hat, if you please."

Fidgetting with his fingers, and scarcely know-
ing what he was doing, the young politician held
it out.

The King placed it on his own chair, and sat
on it.

"A quaint old custom," he explained, smiling
above the ruins. "When the King receives the
representatives of the House of Barker, the hat
of the latter is immediately destroyed in this man-
ner. It represents the absolute finality of the

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

act of homage expressed in the removal of it.
It declares that never until that hat shall once
more appear upon your head (a contingency
which I firmly believe to be remote) shall the
House of Barker rebel against the Crown of
England."

Barker stood with clenched fist, and shaking
lip.

"Your jokes," he began, "and my property — "
and then exploded with an oath, and
stopped again.

"Continue, continue," said the King, waving
his hands.

"What does it all mean?" cried the other,
with a gesture of passionate rationality. "Are
you mad?"

"Not in the least," replied the King, pleasantly.
"Madmen are always serious ; they go mad from
lack of humour. You are looking serious your-
self, Tames."

"Why can't you keep it to your own private
life?" expostulated the other. "You've got
plenty of money, and plenty of houses now to
play the fool in, but in the interests of the
public—"

"Epigrammatic," said the King, shaking his
finger sadly at him. "None of your daring
.scintillations here. As to why I don't do it in

The Charter of the Cities

private, I rather fail to understand your question.
The answer is of comparative limpidity. I don't
do it in private, because it is funnier to do it in
public. You appear to think that it would be
amusing to be dignified in the banquet hall and
in the street, and at my own fireside (I could
procure a fireside) to keep the company in a
roar. But that is what every one does. Every
one is grave in public, and funny in private.
My sense of humour suggests the reversal of
this; it suggests that one should be funny in
public, and solemn in private. I desire to make
the State functions, parliaments, coronations,
and so on, one roaring old-fashioned panto-
mime. But, on the other hand, I shut myself
up alone in a small store-room for two hours a
day, where I am so dignified that I come out
quite ill."

By this time Barker was walking up and down
the room, his frock coat flapping like the black
wings of a bird.

"Well, you will ruin the country, that's all," he
said shortly.

"It seems to me," said Auberon, "that the
tradition of ten centuries is being broken, and
the House of Barker is rebelling against the
Crown of England. It would be with regret (for
I admire your appearance) that I should be

67 '

The Napoleon of dotting Hill

obliged forcibly to decorate your head with the
remains of this hat, but — "

"What I can't understand," said Barker,
flinging up his fingers with a feverish American
movement, "is why you don't care about anything
else but your games."

The King stopped sharply in the act of
lifting the silken remnants, dropped them,
and walked up to Barker, looking at him
steadily.

"I made a kind of vow," he said, "that I would
not talk seriously, which always means answering
silly questions. But the strong man will always
be gentle with politicians.

'The shape my scornful looks deride
Required a God to form;'

if I may so theologically express myself. And
for some reason I cannot in the least understand,
I feel impelled to answer that question of yours,
and to answer it as if there were really
such a thing in the world as a serious subject.
You ask me why I don't care for anything else.
Can you tell me, in the name of all the gods
you don't believe in, why I should care for any-
thing else?"

"Don't you realise common public necessities ?"
cried Barker. "Is it possible that a man of your

The Charter of the Cities

intelligence does not know that it is every one's
interest — "

"Don't you believe in Zoroaster ? Is it possible
that you neglect Mumbo- Jumbo ?" returned
the King, with startling animation. "Does
a man of your intelligence come to me
with these damned early Victorian ethics?
If, on studying my features and manner, you
detect any particular resemblance to the Prince
Consort, I assure you you are mistaken.
Did Herbert Spencer ever convince you-— did
he ever convince anybody — Did he ever for one
mad moment convince himself — that it must
be to the interest of the individual to feel
a public spirit? Do you believe that, if
you rule your department badly, you stand any
more chance, or one half of the chance, of being
guillotined, that an angler stands, of being pulled
into the river by a strong pike? Herbert
Spencer refrained from theft for the same reason
that he refrained from wearing feathers in his
hair, because he was an English gentleman with
different tastes. I am an English gentleman with
different tastes. He liked philosophy. I like
art. He liked writing ten books on the nature
of human society. I like to see the Lord
Chamberlain walking in front of me with
a piece of paper pinned to his coat-tails. It is

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

my humour. Are you answered? At any rate,
I have said my last serious word to-day, and my
last serious word I trust for the remainder of
my life in this Paradise of Fools. The remainder
of my conversation with you to-day, which
I trust will be long and stimulating, I propose
to conduct in a new language of my own
by means of rapid and symbolic movements of
the left leg." And he began to pirouette
slowly round the room with a preoccupied
expression.

Barker ran round the room after him, bom-
barding him with demands and entreaties. But
he received no response except in the new
language. He came out banging the door again,
and sick like a man coming on shore. As
he strode along the streets he found himself
suddenly opposite Cicconani's restaurant, and
for some reason there rose up before him
the green fantastic figure of the Spanish
General, standing, as he had seen him last, at
the door with the words on his lips, "You
cannot argue with the choice of the
soul."

The King came out from his dancing with the
air of a man of business legitimately tired. He
put on an overcoat, lit a cigar, and went out into
the purple night.

I'M KING OF THE CASTLE"

The Charter of the Cities

"I will go," he said, "and mingle with the
people."

He passed swiftly up a street in the neigh-
bourhood of Notting Hill, when suddenly he
felt a hard object driven into his waistcoat.
He paused, put up a single eye-glass, and
beheld a boy with a wooden sword and a paper
cocked hat, wearing that expression of awed
satisfaction with which a child contemplates his
work when he has hit some one very hard. The
King gazed thoughtfully for some time at his
assailant, and slowly took a note-book from his
breast-pocket.

"I have a few notes," he said, "for my
dying speech;" and he turned over the leaves.
"Dying speech for political assassination;
ditto, if by former friend — h'm, h'm.
Dying speech for death at hands of injured hus-
band (repentant). Dying speech for same
(cynical). I am not quite sure which meets the
present. . . ."

"I'm the King of the Castle," said the boy,
truculently, and very pleased with nothing in
particular.

The King was a kind-hearted man, and very
fond of children, like all people who are fond of
the ridiculous.

"Infant," he said, "I'm glad you are so
71

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

stalwart a defender of your old inviolate Notting
Hill. Look up nightly to that peak, my child,
where it lifts itself among the stars so ancient,
so lonely, so unutterably Notting. So long as
you are ready to die for the sacred mountain,
even if it were ringed with all the armies of
Bayswater — "

The King stopped suddenly, and his eyes
shone.

"Perhaps," he said, "perhaps the noblest of
all my conceptions. A revival of the arrogance
of the old mediaeval cities applied to our
glorious suburbs. Clapham with a city guard.
Wimbledon with a city wall. Surbiton tolling
a bell to raise its citizens. West Hampstead
going into battle with its own banner. It shall
be done. I, the King, have said it." And
hastily presenting the boy with half-a-crown,
remarking, "For the war-chest of Notting
Hill," he ran violently home at such a rate of
speed that crowds followed him for miles. On
reaching his study, he ordered a cup of coffee,
and plunged into profound meditation upon the
project. At length he called his favourite
Equerry, Captain Bowler, for whom he had a
deep affection, founded principally upon the shape
of his whiskers.

"Bowler," he said, "isn't there some society of
72

The Charter of the Cities

historical research, or something of which I am
an honorary member?"

"Yes, sir," said Captain Bowler, rubbing his
nose, "you are a member of 'The Encouragers
of Egyptian Renaissance,' and 'The Teutonic
Tombs Club,' and 'The Society for the Recovery
of London Antiquities/ and — "

"That is admirable," said the King. "The
London Antiquities does my trick. Go to the
Society for the Recovery of London Antiquities
and speak to their secretary, and their sub-
secretary, and their president, and their vice-
president, saying, 'The King of England is
proud, but the honorary member of the Society
for the Recovery of London Antiquities is
prouder than kings. I should like to tell you of
certain discoveries I have made touching the
neglected traditions of the London boroughs.
The revelations may cause some excitement,
stirring burning memories and touching old
wounds in Shepherd's Bush and Bayswater, in
Pimlico and South Kensington. The King
hesitates, but the honorary member is firm.
I approach you invoking the vows of my initia-
tion, the Sacred Seven Cats, the Poker of Per-
fection, and the Ordeal of the Indescribable
Instant (forgive me if I mix you up with the
Clan-na-Gael or some other club I belong to),

The Napoleon of dotting Hill

and ask you to permit me to read a paper at
your next meeting on the 'Wars of the London
Boroughs/ Say all this to the Society, Bowler.
Remember it very carefully, for it is most
important, and I have forgotten it altogether,
and send me another cup of coffee and some
of the cigars that we keep for vulgar and
successful people. I am going to write my
paper."

The Society for the Recovery of London
Antiquities met a month after in a corrugated
iron hall on the outskirts of one of the southern
suburbs of London. A large number of people
had collected there under the coarse and flaring
gas-jets when the King arrived, perspiring and
genial. On taking off his great-coat, he was
perceived to be in evening dress, wearing the
Garter. His appearance at the small table,
adorned only with a glass of water, was received
with respectful cheering.

The chairman (Mr. Huggins) said that he was
sure that they had all been pleased to listen to
such distinguished lecturers as they had heard
for some time past (hear, hear). Mr. Burton
(hear, hear), Mr. Cambridge, Professor King
(loud and continued cheers), our old friend Peter
Jessop, Sir William White (loud laughter),
and other eminent men, had done honour to

The Charter of the Cities

their little venture (cheers). But there were
other circumstances which lent a certain unique
quality to the present occasion (hear, hear). So
far as his recollection went, and in connection
with the Society for the Recovery of London
Antiquities it went very far (loud cheers), he
did not remember that any of their lecturers had
borne the title of King. He would therefore call
upon King Auberon briefly to address the
meeting.

The King began by saying that this speech
might be regarded as the first declaration of
his new policy for the nation. "At this
supreme hour of my life I feel that to no one
but the members of the Society for the Recovery
of London Antiquities can I open my heart
(cheers). If the world turns upon my policy,
and the storms of popular hostility begin
to rise (no, no), I feel that it is here, with
my brave Recoverers around me, that I
can best meet them, sword in hand" (loud
cheers).

His Majesty then went on to explain that, now
old age was creeping upon him, he proposed
to devote his remaining strength to bring-
ing about a keener sense of local patriotism
in the various municipalities of London. How
few of them knew the legends of their own

The Napoleon of dotting Hill

boroughs ! How many there were who had never
heard of the true origin of the Wink of
Wandsworth! What a large proportion of the
younger generation in Chelsea neglected to
perform the old Chelsea Chuff! Pimlico no
longer pumped the Pimlies. Battersea had for-
gotten the name of Blick.

There was a short silence, and then a voice said
"Shame."

The King continued: "Being called, how-
ever unworthily, to this high estate, I have
resolved that, so far as possible, this neglect shall
cease. I desire no military glory. I lay claim
to no constitutional equality with Justinian
or Alfred. If I can go down to history as the
man who saved from extinction a few old
English customs, if our descendants can say
it was through this man, humble as he was, that
the Ten Turnips are still eaten in Fulham, and
the Putney parish councillor still shaves one half
of his head, I shall look my great fathers rever-
ently but not fearfully in the face when I go down
to the last house of Kings."

The King paused, visibly affected, but collect-
ing himself, resumed once more.

"I trust that to very few of you, at least, I
need dwell on the sublime origins of these legends.
The very names of your boroughs bear wit-

The Charter of the Cities

ness to them. So long as Hammersmith is
called Hammersmith, its people will live in
the shadow of that primal hero, the Black-
smith, who led the democracy of the Broadway
into battle till he drove the chivalry of
Kensington before him and overthrew them
at that place which in honour of the best blood
of the defeated aristocracy is still called Ken-
sington Gore. Men of Hammersmith will not
fail to remember that the very name of Kensing-
ton originated from the lips of their hero.
For at the great banquet of reconciliation held
after the war, when the disdainful oligarchs
declined to join in the songs of the men of the
Broadway (which are to this day of a rude and
popular character), the great Republican leader,
with his rough humour, said the words which
are written in gold upon his monument, 'Little
birds that can sing and won't sing, must be made
to sing/ So that the Eastern Knights were
called Cansings or Kensings ever afterwards.
But you also have great memories, O men
of Kensington! You showed that you could
sing, and sing great war-songs. Even after
the dark day of Kensington Gore, history
will not forget those three Knights who
guarded your disordered retreat from Hyde
Park (so called from your hiding there), those

The Napoleon of dotting Hill

three Knights after whom Knightsbridge is
named. Nor will it forget the day of your
re-emergence, purged in the fire of calamity,
cleansed of your oligarchic corruptions, when,
sword in hand, you drove the Empire of Ham-
mersmith back mile by mile, swept it past its
own Broadway, and broke it at last in a battle
so long and bloody that the birds of prey have
left their name upon it. Men have called it,
with austere irony, the Ravenscourt. I shall
not, I trust, wound the patriotism of Bays-
water, or the lonelier pride of Brompton, or
that of any other historic township, by taking
these two special examples. I select them, not
because they are more glorious than the rest,
but partly from personal association (I am
myself descended from one of the three heroes
of Knightsbridge), and partly from the con-
sciousness that I am an amateur antiquarian,
and cannot presume to deal with times and
places more remote and more mysterious. It
is not for me to settle the question between
two such men as Professor Hugg and Sir
William Whisky as to whether Netting Hill
means Nutting Hill (in allusion to the rich
woods which no longer cover it), or whether it
is a corruption of Nothing-ill, referring to its
reputation among the ancients as an Earthly

The Charter of the Cities

Paradise. When a Podkins and a Jossy con-
fess themselves doubtful about the boundaries
of West Kensington (said to have been traced
in the blood of Oxen), I need not be ashamed
to confess a similar doubt. I will ask you to
excuse me from further history, and to assist
me with your encouragement in dealing with
the problem which faces us to-day. Is this
ancient spirit of the London townships to die out ?
Are our omnibus conductors and policemen to lose
altogether that light which we see so often in
their eyes, the dreamy light of

'Old unhappy far-off things
And battles long ago'

— to quote the words of a little-known poet
who was a friend of my youth? I have re-
solved, as I have said, so far as possible, to
preserve the eyes of policemen and omnibus
conductors in their present dreamy state. For
what is a state without dreams? And the remedy
I propose is as follows : —

"To-morrow morning at twenty-five minutes
past ten, if Heaven spares my life, I purpose to
issue a Proclamation. It has been the work of
my life, and is about half finished. With the
assistance of a whisky and soda, I shall conclude
the other half to-night, and my people will

The Napoleon of dotting Hill

receive it to-morrow. All these boroughs where
you were born, and hope to lay your bones, shall
be reinstated in their ancient magnificence, —
Hammersmith, Kensington, Bayswater, Chelsea,
Battersea, Clapham, Balham, and a hundred
others. Each shall immediately build a city
wall with gates to be closed at sunset. Each
shall have a city guard, armed to the teeth.
Each shall have a banner, a coat-of-arms, and,
if convenient, a gathering cry. I will not enter
into the details now, my heart is too full.
They will be found in the proclamation itself.
You will all, however, be subject to enrolment
in the local city guards, to be summoned to-
gether by a thing called the Tocsin, the meaning
of which I am studying in my researches into
history. Personally, I believe a tocsin to be
some kind of highly paid official. If, therefore,
any of you happen to have such a thing as a
halberd in the house, I should advise you to prac-
tise with it in the garden."

Here the King buried his face in his handker-
chief and hurriedly left the platform, overcome
by emotions.

The members of the Society for the Recovery
of London Antiquities rose in an indescribable
state of vagueness. Some were purple with
indignation; an intellectual few were purple with

The Charter of the Cities

laughter ; the great majority found their minds
a blank. There remains a tradition that one pale
face with burning blue eyes remained fixed upon
the lecturer, and after the lecture a red-haired
boy ran out of the room.

CHAPTER II — The Council of the Provosts

THE King got up early next morning
and came down three steps at a
time like a schoolboy. Having eaten
his breakfast hurriedly, but with an appetite,
he summoned one of the highest officials of
the Palace, and presented him with a shill-
ing. "Go and buy me," he said, "a shill-
ing paint-box, which you will get, unless
the mists of time mislead me, in a shop at the
corner of the second and dirtier street that
leads out of Rochester Row. I have already
requested the Master of the Buckhounds to
provide me with cardboard. It seemed to me
(I know not why) that it fell within his
department."

The King was happy all that morning with
his cardboard and his paint-box. He was
engaged in designing the uniforms and
coats-of-arms for the various municipalities
of London. They gave him deep and no
inconsiderable thought. He felt the respon-
sibility.

"I cannot think," he said, "why people should
think the names of places in the country more

The Council of the Provosts

poetical than those in London. Shallow
romanticists go away in trains and stop in places
called Hugmy-in-the-Hole, or Bumps-on-the-
Puddle. And all the time they could, if they
liked, go and live at a place with the dim,
divine name of St. John's Wood. I have
never been to St. John's Wood. I dare
not. I should be afraid of the innumer-
able night of fir trees, afraid to come upon
a blood-red cup and the beating of the wings
of the Eagle. But all these things can be
imagined by remaining reverently in the Harrow
train."

And he thoughtfully retouched his design for
the head-dress of the halberdier of St. John's
Wood, a design in black and red, compounded
of a pine tree and the plumage of an eagle.
Then he turned to another card. "Let us
think of milder matters," he said. "Lavender
Hill! Could any of your glebes and combes
and all the rest of it produce so fragrant an
idea? Think of a mountain of lavender
lifting itself in purple poignancy into the silver
skies and filling men's nostrils with a new
breath of life — a purple hill of incense. It is
true that upon my few excursions of discovery
on a halfpenny tram I have failed to hit the
precise spot. But it must be there; some poet

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

called it by its name. There is at least warrant
enough for the solemn purple plumes (following
the botanical formation of lavender) which I
have required people to wear in the neighbour-
hood of Clapham Junction. It is so everywhere,
after all. I have never been actually to South-
fields, but I suppose a scheme of lemons and
olives represent their austral instincts. I have
never visited Parson's Green, or seen either the
Green or the Parson, but surely the pale-green
shovel-hats I have designed must be more or less
in the spirit. I must work in the dark and
let my instincts guide me. The great love I
bear to my people will certainly save me from
distressing their noble spirit or violating their
great traditions."

As he was reflecting in this vein, the door was
flung open, and an official announced Mr. Barker
and Mr. Lambert.

Mr. Barker and Mr. Lambert were not particu-
larly surprised to find the King sitting on the
floor amid a litter of water-colour sketches.
They were not particularly surprised because the
last time they had called on him they had
found him sitting on the floor, surrounded by
a litter of children's bricks, and the time before
surrounded by a litter of wholly unsuccessful
attempts to make paper darts. But the trend of

The Council of the Provosts

the royal infant's remarks, uttered from amid
this infantile chaos, was not quite the same affair.
For some time they let him babble on, con-
scious that his remarks meant nothing. And
then a horrible thought began to steal over
the mind of James Barker. He began to
think that the King's remarks did not mean
nothing.

"In God's name, Auberon," he suddenly
volleyed out, startling the quiet hall, "you
don't mean that you are really going to
have these city guards and city walls and
things ?"

"I am, indeed," said the infant, in a quiet
voice. "Why shouldn't I have them? I have
modelled them precisely on your political prin-
ciples. Do you know what I've done,
Barker? I've behaved like a true Barkerian.
I've . . . but perhaps it won't interest you, the
account of my Barkerian conduct."

"Oh, go on, go on," cried Barker.

"The account of my Barkerian conduct," said
Auberon, calmly, "seems not only to interest, but
to alarm you. Yet it is very simple. It
merely consists in choosing all the provosts
under any new scheme by the same principle
by which you have caused the central despot
to be appointed. Each provost, of each city,

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

under my charter, is to be appointed by
rotation. Sleep, therefore, my Barker, a rosy
sleep."

Barker's wild eyes flared.

"But, in God's name, don't you see, Quin,
that the thing is quite different? In the centre
it doesn't matter so much, just because the
whole object of despotism is to get some sort
of unity. But if any damned parish can go to
any damned man — "

"I see your difficulty," said King Auberon,
calmly. "You feel that your talents may be
neglected. Listen!" And he rose with im-
mense magnificence. "I solemnly give to my
liege subject, James Barker, my special and
splendid favour, the right to override the
obvious text of the Charter of the Cities, and
to be, in his own right, Lord High Provost of
South Kensington. And now, my dear James,
you are all right. Good day."

"But-^" began Barker.

"The audience is at an end, Provost," said the
King, smiling.

How far his confidence was justified, it would
require a somewhat complicated description to
explain. "The Great Proclamation of the
Charter of the Free Cities" appeared in due
course that morning, and was posted by bill-

The Council of the Provosts

stickers all over the front of the Palace, the
King assisting them with animated directions,
and standing in the middle of the road, with his
head on one side, contemplating the result. It
was also carried up and down the main thorough-
fares by sandwichmen, and the King was, with
difficulty, restrained from going out in that
capacity himself, being, in fact, found by the
Groom of the Stole and Captain Bowler,
struggling between two boards. His excite-
ment had positively to be quieted like that of a
child.

The reception which the Charter of the
Cities met at the hands of the public may mildly
be described as mixed. In one sense it was
popular enough. In many happy homes that
remarkable legal document was read aloud on
winter evenings amid uproarious appreciation,
when everything had been learnt by heart from
that quaint but immortal old classic, Mr. W.
W. Jacobs. But when it was discovered
that the King had every intention of seriously
requiring the provisions to be carried out, of
insisting that the grotesque cities, with their
tocsins and city guards, should really come
into existence, things were thrown into a
far angrier confusion. Londoners had no
particular objection to the King making a

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

fool of himself, but they became indig-
nant when it became evident that he
wished to make fools of them; and protests
began to come in.

The Lord High Provost of the Good and
Valiant City of West Kensington wrote a re-
spectful letter to the King, explaining that upon
State occasions it would, of course, be his duty
to observe what formalities the King thought
proper, but that it was really awkward for a
decent householder not to be allowed to go out
and put a post-card in a pillar-box without
being escorted by five heralds, who announced,
with formal cries and blasts of a trumpet, that
the Lord High Provost desired to catch the
post.

The Lord High Provost of North Kensington,
who was a prosperous draper, wrote a curt busi-
ness note, like a man complaining of a railway
company, stating that definite inconvenience
had been caused him by the presence of the hal-
berdiers, whom he had to take with him every-
where. When attempting to catch an omnibus to
the City, he had found that while room could
have been found for himself, the halberdiers had
a difficulty in getting into the vehicle — believe
him, theirs faithfully.

The Lord High Provost of Shepherd's Bush
88

The Council of the Provosts

said his wife did not like men hanging round the
kitchen.

The King was always delighted to listen to
these grievances, delivering lenient and kingly an-
swers, but as he always insisted, as the abso-
lute sine qua non, that verbal complaints should
be presented to him with the fullest pomp of
trumpets, plumes, and halberds, only a few reso-
lute spirits were prepared to run the gauntlet of
the little boys in the street.

Among these, however, was prominent the
abrupt and business-like gentleman who ruled
North Kensington. And he had before long,
occasion to interview the King about a matter
wider and even more urgent than the problem
of the halberdiers and the omnibus. This was
the greatest question which then and for long
afterwards brought a stir to the blood and a
flush to the cheek of all the speculative builders
and house agents from Shepherd's Bush to the
Marble Arch, and from Westbourne Grove to
High Street, Kensington. I refer to the great
affair of the improvements in Notting Hill.
The scheme was conducted chiefly by Mr.
Buck, the abrupt North Kensington magnate,
and by Mr. Wilson, the Provost of Baycwater.
A great thoroughfare was to be driven through
three boroughs, through West Kensington,

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

North Kensington and Notting Hill, opening
at one end into Hammersmith Broadway, and
at the other into Westbourne Grove. The
negotiations, buyings, sellings, bullying and
bribing took ten years, and by the end of
it Buck, who had conducted them almost
single-handed, had proved himself a man of the
strongest type of material energy and material
diplomacy. And just as his splendid patience
and more splendid impatience had finally brought
him victory, when workmen were already de-
molishing houses and walls along the great line
from Hammersmith, a sudden obstacle appeared
that had neither been reckoned with nor dreamed
of, a small and strange obstacle, which, like a
speck of grit in a great machine, jarred the
whole vast scheme and brought it to a stand-
still, and Mr. Buck, the draper, getting with
great impatience into his robes of office and
summoning with indescribable disgust his
halberdiers, hurried over to speak to the
King.

Ten years had not tired the King of his joke.
There were still new faces to be seen looking
out from the symbolic head-gears he had
designed, gazing at him from amid the pastoral
ribbons of Shepherd's Bush or from under the
sombre hoods of the Blackfriars Road. And the

The Council of the Provosts

interview which was promised him with the
Provost of North Kensington he anticipated
with a particular pleasure, for "he never really
enjoyed," he said, "the full richness of the
mediaeval garments unless the people compelled
to wear them were very angry and business-
like."

Mr. Buck was both. At the King's com-
mand the door of the audience-chamber was
thrown open and a herald appeared in the
purple colours of Mr. Buck's commonwealth
emblazoned with the Great Eagle which the
King had attributed to North Kensington, in
vague reminiscence of Russia, for he always
insisted on regarding North Kensington as some
kind of semi-arctic neighbourhood. The herald
announced that the Provost of that city desired
audience of the King.

"From North Kensington?" said the King,
rising graciously. "What news does he bring
from that land of high hills and fair women ? He
is welcome."

The herald advanced into the room, and was
immediately followed by twelve guards clad in
purple, who were followed by an attendant
bearing the banner of the Eagle, who was
followed by another attendant bearing the
keys of the city upon a cushion, who was

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

followed by Mr. Buck in a great hurry.
When the King saw his strong animal face
and steady eyes, he knew that he was in the
presence of a great man of business, and con-
sciously braced himself.

"Well, well," he said, cheerily coming down
two or three steps from a dais, and striking his
hands lightly together, "I am glad to see you.
Never mind, never mind. Ceremony is not
everything."

"I don't understand your Majesty," said the
Provost, stolidly.

"Never mind, never mind," said the King,
gaily. "A knowledge of Courts is by no means
an unmixed merit; you will do it next time, no
doubt."

The man of business looked at him sulkily from
under his black brows and said again without
show of civility —

"I don't follow you."

"Well, well," replied the King, good-naturedly,
"if you ask me I don't mind telling you,
not because I myself attach any importance to
these forms in comparison with the Honest
Heart. But it is usual — it is usual — that is
all, for a man when entering the presence
of Royalty to lie down on his back on
the floor and elevating his feet towards heaven

The Council of the Provosts

(as the source of Royal power) to say
three times 'Monarchical institutions improve
the manners/ But there, there — such pomp
is far less truly dignified than your simple
kindliness."

The Provost's face was red with anger and he
maintained silence.

"And now," said the King, lightly, and with
the exasperating air of a man softening a snub;
"what delightful weather we are having! You
must find your official robes warm, my Lord.
I designed them for your own snow-bound
land."

"They're as hot as Hell," said Buck, briefly. "I
came here on business."

"Right," said the King, nodding a great
number of times with quite unmeaning solem-
nity; "right, right, right. Business, as the sad
glad old Persian said, is business. Be punctual.
Rise early. Point the pen to the shoulder.
Point the pen to the shoulder, for you know
not whence you come nor why. Point the pen
to the shoulder, for you know not when you go
nor where."

The Provost pulled a number of papers
from his pocket and savagely flapped them
open.

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

"Your Majesty may have heard," he began,
sarcastically, "of Hammersmith and a thing
called a road. We have been at work ten
years buying property and getting compulsory
powers and fixing compensation and squaring
vested interests, and now at the very end,
the thing is stopped by a fool. Old Prout,
who was Provost of Notting Hill, was a
business man, and we dealt with him quite
satisfactorily. But he's dead, and the cursed
lot has fallen to a young man named Wayne,
who's up to some game that's perfectly
incomprehensible to me. We offer him a
better price than any one ever dreamt of, but
he won't let the road go through. And his
Council seem to be backing him up. It's mid-
summer madness."

The King, who was rather inattentively
engaged in drawing the Provost's nose with
his finger on the window-pane, heard the last two
words.

"What a perfect phrase that is," he said.
" 'Midsummer madness !' "

"The chief point is," continued Buck,
doggedly, "that the only part that is really
in question is one dirty little street — Pump
Street — a street with nothing in it but a public
house and a penny toy-shop, and that sort of

The Council of the Provosts

thing. All the respectable people of Notting Hill
have accepted our compensation. But the in-
effable Wayne sticks out over Pump Street.
Says he's Provost of Notting Hill. He's only
Provost of Pump Street."

"A good thought," replied Auberon. " I like
the idea of a Provost of Pump Street. Why not
let him alone?"

"And drop the whole scheme!" cried out
Buck, with a burst of brutal spirit. "I'll be
damned if we do. No. I'm for sending
in workmen to pull down without more
ado."

"Strike for the purple Eagle," cried the King,
hot with historical associations.

"I'll tell you what it is," said Buck, losing
his temper altogether. "If your Majesty
would spend less time in insulting respect-
able people with your silly coats-of-
arms, and more time over the business of
the nation — "

The King's brow wrinkled thoughtfully.

"The situation is not bad," he said; "the
haughty burgher defying the King in his own
Palace. The burgher's head should be thrown
back and the right arm extended; the left may
be lifted towards Heaven, but that I leave to
your private religious sentiment. I have sunk

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

back in this chair, stricken with baffled fury. Now
again, please."

Buck's mouth opened like a dog's, but before
he could speak another herald appeared at the
door.

"The Lord High Provost of Bayswater," he
said, "desires an audience."

"Admit him," said Auberon. "This is a jolly
day."

The halberdiers of Bayswater wore a pre-
vailing uniform of green, and the banner which
was borne after them was emblazoned with a
green bay-wreath on a silver ground, which the
King, in the course of his researches into a
bottle of champagne, had discovered to be the
quaint old punning cognisance of the city of
Bayswater.

"It is a fit symbol," said the King, "your im-
mortal bay-wreath. Fulham may seek for
wealth, and Kensington for art, but when
did the men of Bayswater care for anything but
glory?"

Immediately behind the banner, and almost
completely hidden by it_ came the Provost of
the city, clad in splendid robes of green and
silver with white fur and crowned with bay.
He was an anxious little man with red whiskers,
originally the owner of a small sweet-stuff shop.

The Council of the Provosts

"Our cousin of Bayswater," said the King,
with delight; "what can we get for you?"
The King was heard also distinctly to mutter,
"Cold beef, cold 'am, cold chicken," his voice
dying into silence.

"I came to see your Majesty," said the Provost
of Bayswater, whose name was Wilson, "about
that Pump Street affair."

"I have just been explaining the situation to
his Majesty," said Buck, curtly, but recovering
his civility. "I am not sure, however, whether
his Majesty knows how much the matter affects
you also."

"It affects both of us, yer see, yer Majesty, as
this scheme was started for the benefit of the 'ole
neighbourhood. So Mr. Buck and me we put our
'eads together — "

The King clasped his hands.

"Perfect," he cried in ecstacy. "Your heads
together ! I can see it ! Can't you do it now ? Oh,
do do it now."

A smothered sound of amusement appeared to
come from the halberdiers, but Mr. Wilson
looked merely bewildered, and Mr. Buck merely
diabolical.

"I suppose," he began, bitterly, but the
King stopped him with a gesture of lis-
tening.

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

"Hush," he said, "I think I hear some one else
coming. I seem to hear another herald, a herald
whose boots creak."

As he spoke another voice cried from the door-
way—

"The Lord High Provost of South Kensington
desires an audience."

"The Lord High Provost of South Kensing-
ton!" cried the King. "Why, that is my
old friend James Barker ! What does he want
I wonder? If the tender memories of friendship
have not grown misty, I fancy he wants some-
thing for himself, probably money. How are you,
James?"

Mr. James Barker, whose guard was attired
in a splendid blue, and whose blue banner
bore three gold birds singing, rushed, in
his blue and gold robes, into the room.
Despite the absurdity of all the dresses,
it was worth noticing that he carried his
better than the rest, though he loathed it as
much as any of them. He was a gentle-
man, and a very handsome man, and could
not help unconsciously wearing even his
preposterous robe as it should be worn.
He spoke quickly, but with the slight
initial hesitation he always showed in address-
ing the King, due to suppressing an impulse

The Council of the Provosts

to address his old acquaintance in the old
way.

"Your Majesty — pray forgive my intrusion.
It is about this man at Pump Street. I see you
have Buck here, so you have probably heard what
is necessary. I — "

The King swept his eyes anxiously round the
room, which now blazed with the trappings of
three cities.

"There is one thing necessary," he said.

"Yes, your Majesty," said Mr. Wilson of Bays-
water, a little eagerly. "What does yer Majesty
think necessary?"

"A little yellow," said the king, firmly.
"Send for the Provost of West Kensing-
ton."

Amid some materialistic protests he was
sent for and arrived with his yellow halber-
diers in his saffron robes, wiping his fore-
head with a handkerchief. After all, placed
as he was, he had a good deal to say on
the matter.

"Welcome, West Kensington," said the
King. "I have long wished to see you, touch-
ing that matter of the Hammersmith land to
the south of the Rowton House. Will you
hold it feudally from the Provost of Hammer-
smith? You have only to do him homage by

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

putting his left arm in his overcoat and then
marching home in state."

"No, your Majesty; I'd rather not,"
said the Provost of West Kensington, who
was a pale young man with a fair mous-
tache and whiskers, who kept a successful
dairy.

The King struck him heartily on the
shoulder.

"The fierce old West Kensington blood,"
he said; "they are not wise who ask it to do
homage."

Then he glanced again round the room. It
was full of a roaring sunset of colour, and he
enjoyed the sight, possible to so few artists —
the sight of his own dreams moving and
blazing before him. In the foreground the
yellow of the West Kensington liveries out-
lined itself against the dark blue draperies of
South Kensington. The crests of these again
brightened suddenly into green as the almost
woodland colours of Bayswater rose behind
them. And over and behind all, the great
purple plumes of North Kensington showed
almost funereal and black.

"There is something lacking," said the King,
"something lacking. What can — Ah, there it is!
—there it is !"

too

The Council of the Provosts

In the doorway had appeared a new figure, a
herald in flaming red. He cried in a loud but
unemotional voice —

"The Lord High Provost of Netting Hill de-
sires an audience."

IOI

CHAPTER III — Enter a Lunatic

THE King of the Fairies, who was, it is
to be presumed, the godfather of King
Auberon, must have been very favour-
able on this particular day to his fantastic
godchild, for with the entrance of the guard
of the Provost of Notting Hill there was
a certain more or less inexplicable addition
to his delight. The wretched navvies and
sandwich-men who carried the colours of
Bayswater or South Kensington, engaged
merely for the day to satisfy the Royal
hobby, slouched into the room with a com-
paratively hang-dog air, and a great part of the
King's intellectual pleasure consisted in the
contrast between the arrogance of their swords
and feathers and the meek misery of their
faces. But these Notting Hill halberdiers in
their red tunics belted with gold had the
air rather of an absurd gravity. They
seemed, so to speak, to be taking part in
the joke. They marched and wheeled into
position with an almost startling dignity and dis-
cipline.

They carried a yellow banner with a great
red lion, named by the King as the Notting

IO2

Enter a Lunatic

Hill emblem, after a small public-house in the
neighbourhood, which he once frequented.

Between the two lines of his followers there
advanced towards the King a tall, red-haired
young man, with high features, and bold blue
eyes. He would have been called handsome,
but that a certain indefinable air of his nose
being too big for his face, and his feet for his
tegs, gave him a look of awkwardness and
extreme youth. His robes were red, according
to the King's heraldry, and alone among the
Provosts, he was girt with a great sword. This
was Adam Wayne, the intractable Provost of
Notting Hill.

The King flung himself back in his chair, and
rubbed his hands.

"What a day, what a day !" he said to himself.
"Now there'll be a row. I'd no idea it would
be such fun as it is. These Provosts are so very
indignant, so very reasonable, so very right. This
fellow, by the look in his eyes, is even more
indignant than the rest. No sign in those
large blue eyes, at any rate, of ever having
heard of a joke. He'll remonstrate with the
others, and they'll remonstrate with him, and
they'll all make themselves sumptuously happy
remonstrating with me."

"Welcome, my Lord," he said aloud. "What
103

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

news from the Hill of a Hundred Legends?
What have you for the ear of your King?
I know that troubles have arisen between you
and these others, our cousins, but these
troubles it shall be our pride to compose. And
I doubt not, and cannot doubt, that your love
for me is not less tender, no less ardent than
theirs."

Mr. Buck made a bitter face, and James
Barker's nostrils curled; Wilson began to
giggle faintly, and the Provost of West Ken-
sington followed in a smothered way. But the
big blue eyes of Adam Wayne never changed,
and he called out in an odd, boyish voice down
the hall—

"I bring homage to my King. I bring him the
only thing I have — my sword."

And with a great gesture he flung it down
on the ground, and knelt on one knee behind
it.

There was a dead silence.

"I beg your pardon," said the King, blankly.

"You speak well, sire," said Adam Wayne,
"as you ever speak, when you say that my love
is not less than the love of these. Small would
it be if it were not more. For I am the heir of
your scheme — the child of the great Charter.
I stand here for the rights the Charter gave me,

104

I BRING HOMAGE TO MY KING"

Enter a Lunatic

and I swear, by your sacred crown, that where I
stand, I stand fast."

The eyes of all five men stood out of their
heads.

Then Buck said, in his jolly, jarring voice : "Is
the whole world mad?"

The King sprang to his feet, and his eyes
blazed.

"Yes," he cried, in a voice of exultation,
"the whole world is mad, but Adam Wayne
and me. It is true as death what I told you
long ago, James Barker, seriousness sends men
mad. You are mad, because you care for
politics, as mad as a man who collects tram
tickets. Buck is mad, because he cares for
money, as mad as a man who lives on opium.
Wilson is mad, because he thinks himself right,
as mad as a man who thinks himself God
Almighty. The Provost of West Kensington
is mad, because he thinks he is respectable, as
mad as a man who thinks he is a chicken. All
men are mad, but the humourist, who cares for
nothing and possesses everything. I thought
that there was only one humourist in England.
Fools! — dolts! — open your cows' eyes; there
are two! In Notting Hill — in that unpromis-
ing elevation — there has been born an artist!
You thought to spoil my joke, and bully me out

105

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

of it, by becoming more and more modern, more
and more practical, more and more bustling
and rational. Oh, what a feast it was to answer
you by becoming more and more august,
more and more gracious, more and more ancient
and mellow! But this lad has seen how to bowl
me out. He has answered me back, vaunt for
vaunt, rhetoric for rhetoric. He has lifted
the only shield I cannot break, the shield
of an impenetrable pomposity. Listen to him.
You have come, my Lord, about Pump
Street?"

"About the city of Notting Hill," answered
Wayne, proudly. "Of which Pump Street is a
living and rejoicing part."

"Not a very large part," said Barker, contemp-
tuously.

"That which is large enough for the rich to
covet," said Wayne, drawing up his head, "is
large enough for the poor to defend."

The King slapped both his legs, and waved his
feet for a second in the air.

"Every respectable person in Notting Hill,"
cut in Buck, with his cold, coarse voice, "is for
us and against you. I have plenty of friends in
Notting Hill."

"Your friends are those who have taken your
gold for other men's hearthstones, my Lord

106

Enter a Lunatic

Buck," said Provost Wayne. "I can well believe
they are your friends."

"They've never sold dirty toys, anyhow," said
Buck, laughing shortly.

"They've sold dirtier things," said Wayne,
calmly; "they have sold themselves."

"It's no good, my Buckling," said the King,
rolling about on his chair. "You can't cope
with this chivalrous eloquence. You can't cope
with an artist. You can't cope with the
humourist of Netting Hill. O, Nunc dimittis —
that I have lived to see this day ! Provost Wayne,
you stand firm?"

"Let them wait and see," said Wayne. "If
I stood firm before, do you think I shall weaken
now that I have seen the face of the King?
For I fight for something greater, if greater
there can be, than the hearthstones of my
people and the Lordship of the Lion. I fight for
your royal vision, for the great dream you
dreamt of the League of the Free Cities. You
have given me this liberty. If I had been a
beggar and you had flung me a coin, if I had
been a peasant in a dance and you had flung
me a favour, do you think I would have let it
be taken by any ruffians on the road? This
leadership and liberty of Notting Hill is a gift

from your Majesty. And if it is taken from

IP7

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

me, by God! it shall be taken in battle, and
the noise of that battle shall be heard in the
flats of Chelsea and in the studios of St. John's
Wood."

"It is too much — it is too much," said the
King. "Nature is weak. I must speak to
you, brother artist, without further disguise.
Let me ask you a solemn question. Adam
Wayne, Lord High Provost of Notting Hill,
don't you think it splendid?"

"Splendid!" cried Adam Wayne. "It has the
splendour of God."

"Bowled out again," said the King. "You will
keep up the pose. Funnily, of course, it is serious.
But seriously, isn't it funny ?"

"What?" asked Wayne, with the eyes of a
baby.

"Hang it all, don't play any more. The whole
business — the Charter of the Cities. Isn't it im-
mense?"

"Immense is no unworthy word for that glori-
ous design."

"Oh, hang you — but, of course, I see. You
want me to clear the room of these reasonable
sows. You want the two humourists alone
together. Leave us, gentlemen."

Buck threw a sour look at Barker, and at a
sullen signal the whole pageant of blue and green,

108

Enter a Lunatic

of red, gold and purple rolled out of the
room, leaving only two in the great hall, the King
sitting in his seat on the dais, and the red-clad
figure still kneeling on the floor before his fallen
sword.

The King bounded down the steps and smacked
Provost Wayne on the back.

"Before the stars were made," he cried, "we
were made for each other. It is too beautiful.
Think of the valiant independence of Pump Street.
That is the real thing. It is the deification of the
ludicrous."

The kneeling figure sprang to his feet with a
fierce stagger.

"Ludicrous !" he cried, with a fiery face.

"Oh come, come," said the King, impatiently.
"You needn't keep it up with me. The augurs
must wink sometimes from sheer fatigue of the
eyelids. Let us enjoy this for half an hour, not
as actors, but as dramatic critics. Isn't it a joke?"

Adam Wayne looked down like a boy, and
answered in a constrained voice —

"I do not understand your Majesty. I cannot
believe that while I fight for your royal charter
your Majesty deserts me for these dogs of the
gold hunt."

"Oh, damn your— But wfiat's this? What the
devil's this?"

109

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

The King stared into the young Provost's
face, and in the twilight of the room began
to see that his face was quite white and his lip
shaking.

"What in God's name is the matter?" criof
Auberon, holding his wrist.

Wayne flung back his face, and the tears were
shining on it.

"I am only a boy," he said, "but it's true. I
would paint the Red Lion on my shield if I had
only my blood."

King Auberon dropped the hand and stood
without stirring, thunderstruck.

"My God in Heaven!" he said; "is it
possible that there is within the four seas of
Britain a man who takes Notting Hill seri-
ously?—"

"And my God in Heaven!" said Wayne pas-
sionately; "is it possible that there is within the
four seas of Britain a man who does not take it
seriously ?"

The King said nothing, but merely went
back up the steps of the dais, like a man dazed.
He fell back in his chair again and kicked his
heels.

"If this sort of thing is to go on," he said
weakly, "I shall begin to doubt the superiority
of art to life. In Heaven's name, do not play

Enter a Lunatic

with me. Do you really mean that you are —
God help me! — a Netting Hill patriot — that you
are—"

Wayne made a violent gesture, and the King
soothed him wildly.

"All right — all right — I see you are; but let
me take it in. You do really propose to
fight these modern improvers with their boards
and inspectors and surveyors and all the rest
of it—"

"Are they so terrible?" asked Wayne, scorn-
fully.

The King continued to stare at him as if he
were a human curiosity.

"And I suppose," he said, "that you think that
the dentists and small tradesmen and maiden
ladies who inhabit Notting Hill, will rally with
war-hymns to your standard?"

"If they have blood they will," said the
Provost.

"And I suppose," said the King, with his head
back among the cushions, "that it never
crossed your mind that" — his voice seemed to
lose itself luxuriantly — "never crossed your mind
that any one ever thought that the idea of a
Notting Hill idealism was — er — slightly — slightly
ridiculous."

"Of course they think so," said Wayne,
in

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

"What was the meaning of mocking the
prophets ?"

"Where?" asked the King, leaning forward.
"Where in Heaven's name did you get this mirac-
ulously inane idea?"

"You have been my tutor, Sire," said the
Provost, "in all that is high and honour-
able/'

"Elff" said the King.

"It was your Majesty who first stirred my dim
patriotism into flame. Ten years ago, when I
was a boy (I am only nineteen), I was playing
on the slope of Pump Street, with a wooden
sword and a paper helmet, dreaming of great
wars. In an angry trance I struck out with
my sword and stood petrified, for I saw that I
had struck you, Sire, my King, as you wandered
in a noble secrecy, watching over your people's
welfare. But I need have had no fear. Then
was I taught to understand Kingliness. You
neither shrank nor frowned. You summoned
no guards. You invoked no punishments.
But in august and burning words, which are
written in my soul, never to be erased, you
told me ever to turn my sword against the
enemies of my inviolate city. Like a priest
pointing to the altar, you pointed to the hill of
Notting. 'So long,' you said, 'as you are

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Enter a Lunatic

ready to die for the sacred mountain, even if it
were ringed with all the armies of Bayswater.'
I have not forgotten the words, and I have
reason now to remember them, for the hour is
come and the crown of your prophecy. The sacred
hill is ringed with the armies of Bayswater, and
I am ready to die."

The King was lying back in his chair, a kind of
wreck.

"O Lord, Lord, Lord," he murmured, "what
a life! what a life! All my work! I
seem to have done it all. So you're the red-
haired boy that hit me in the waistcoat. What
have I done? God, what have I done? I
thought I would have a joke, and I have
created a passion. I tried to compose a
burlesque, and it seems to be turning halfway
through into an epic. What is to be done
with such a world? In the Lord's name,
wasn't the joke broad and bold enough? I
abandoned my subtle humour to amuse you, and
I seem to have brought tears to your eyes. What's
to be done with people when you write a
pantomime for them — call the sausages classic
festoons, and the policeman cut in two a tragedy
of public duty? But why am I talking? Why
am I asking questions of a nice young gentle-
man who is totally mad ? What is the good of it ?

The "Napoleon of dotting Hill

What is the good of anything? O Lord, O
Lord!"

Suddenly he pulled himself upright.

"Don't you really think the sacred Notting Hill
at all absurd?"

"Absurd?" asked Wayne, blankly. "Why
should I?"

The King stared back equally blankly.

"I beg your pardon ?" he said.

"Notting Hill," said the Provost, simply, "is
a rise or high ground of the common earth, on
which men have built houses to live, in which they
are born, fall in love, pray, marry, and die. Why
should I think it absurd?"

The King smiled.

"Because, my Leonidas — " he began, then
suddenly, he knew not how, found his mind
was a total blank. After all, why was it
absurd? Why was it absurd? He felt as
if the floor of his mind had given way. He felt
as all men feel when their first principles are
hit hard with a question. Barker always
felt so when the King said, "Why trouble about
politics ?"

The King's thoughts were in a kind of rout;
he could not collect them.

"It is generally felt to be a little funny," he

said, vaguely.

114

Enter a Lunatic

"I suppose," said Adam, turning on him with
a fierce suddenness, "I suppose you fancy cruci-
fixion was a serious affair?"

"Well, I—" began Auberon, "I admit I
have generally thought it had its graver
side."

"Then you are wrong," said Wayne, with
incredible violence. "Crucifixion is comic. It
is exquisitely diverting. It was an absurd and
obscene kind of impaling reserved for people who
were made to be laughed at — for slaves and pro-
vincials— for dentists and small tradesmen, as you
would say. I have seen the grotesque gallows-
shape, which the little Roman gutter-boys
scribbled on walls as a vulgar joke, blazing
on the pinnacles of the temples of the world. And
shall I turn back?"

The King made no answer.

Adam went on, his voice ringing in the
roof.

"This laughter with which men tyrannise is
not the great power you think it. Peter was
crucified, and crucified head downwards.
What could be funnier than the idea of a
respectable old Apostle upside down? What
could be more in the style of your modern
humour? But what was the good of it?
Upside down or right side up, Peter was Peter

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

to mankind. Upside down he still hangs over
Europe, and millions move and breathe only in
the life of his church."

King Auberon got up absently.

"There is something in what you say/* he
said. "You seem to have been thinking, young
man."

"Only feeling, sire," answered the Provost "I
was born, like other men, in a spot of the
earth which I loved because I had played boys'
games there, and fallen in love, and talked with
my friends through nights that were nights of
the gods. And I feel the riddle. These
little gardens where we told our loves. These
streets where we brought out our dead. Why
should they be commonplace? Why should
they be absurd? Why should it be grotesque
to say that a pillar-box is poetic when for a
year I could not see a red pillar-box against the
yellow evening in a certain street without being
wracked with something of which God keeps
the secret, but which is stronger than sorrow or
joy? Why should any one be able to
raise a laugh by saying 'the Cause of Notting
Hill'? — Notting Hill where thousands of
immortal spirits blaze with alternate hope and
fear."

Auberon was flicking dust off his sleeve with
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Enter a Lunatic

quite a new seriousness on his face, distinct from
the owlish solemnity which was the pose of his
humour.

"It is very difficult," he said at last. "It
is a damned difficult thing. I see what you
mean — I agree with you even up to a point
—or I should like to agree with you, if
I were young enough to be a prophet
and poet. I feel a truth in everything you
say until you come to the words 'Notting
Hill.' And then I regret to say that the old
Adam awakes roaring with laughter and makes
short work of the new Adam, whose name is
Wayne."

For the first time Provost Wayne was silent,
and stood gazing dreamily at the floor. Even-
ing was closing in, and the room had grown
darker.

"I know," he said, in a strange, almost
sleepy voice, "there is truth in what you say,
too. It is hard not to laugh at the common
names — I only say we should not. I have
thought of a remedy ; but such thoughts are rather
terrible."

"What thoughts?" asked Auberon.

The Provost of Notting Hill seemed to have
fallen into a kind of trance; in his eyes was an
elvish light.

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The Napoleon of dotting Hill

"I know of a magic wand, but it is a wand
that only one or two may rightly use, and only
seldom. It is a fairy wand of great fear, stronger
than those who use it — often frightful, often
wicked to use. But whatever is touched with
it is never again wholly common. Whatever
is touched with it takes a magic from outside
the world. If I touch, with this fairy wand,
the railways and the roads of Netting Hill,
men will love them, and be afraid of them for
ever."

"What the devil are you talking about?" asked
the King.

"It has made mean landscapes magnificent,
and hovels outlast cathedrals," went on the
madman. "Why should it not make lamp-
posts fairer than Greek lamps, and an
omnibus ride like a painted ship? The
touch of it is the finger of a strange per-
fection."

"What is your wand?" cried the King, im-
patiently.

"There it is," said Wayne; and pointed
to the floor, where his sword lay flat and
shining.

"The sword!" cried the King; and sprang up
straight on the dais.

"Yes, yes," cried Wayne, hoarsely. "The
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Enter a Lunatic

things touched by that are not vulgar. The things
touched by that — "

King Auberon made a gesture of horror.

"You will shed blood for that !" he cried. "For
a cursed point of view — "

"Oh, you kings, you kings," cried out Adam,
in a burst of scorn. "How humane you are, how
tender, how considerate. You will make war
for a frontier, or the imports of a foreign har-
bour; you will shed blood for the precise duty
on lace, or the salute to an admiral. But for
the things that make life itself worthy or
miserable — how humane you are. I say here,
and I know well what I speak of, there were
never any necessary wars but the religious
wars. There were never any just wars but
the religious wars. There were never any
humane wars but the religious wars. For
these men were fighting for something that
claimed, at least, to be the happiness of a
man, the virtue of a man. A Crusader
thought, at least, that Islam hurt the soul of every
man, king or tinker, that it could really cap-
ture. I think Buck and Barker and these
rich vultures hurt the soul of every man, hurt
every inch of the ground, hurt every brick of the
houses, that they can really capture. Do you
think I have no right to fight for Netting Hill,

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The Napoleon of Notting Hill

you whose English Government has so often
fought for tomfooleries? If, as your rich
friends say, there are no gods, and the skies
are dark above us, what should a man fight for,
but the place where he had the Eden of
childhood and the short heaven of first love? If
no temples and no scriptures are sacred,
what is sacred if a man's own youth is
not sacred?"

The King walked a little restlessly up and down
the da'is.

"It is hard," he said, biting his lips, "to
assent to a view so desperate — so respon-
sible . . ."

As he spoke, the door of the audience chamber
fell ajar, and through the aperture came, like the
sudden chatter of a bird, the high, nasal, but well-
bred voice of Barker.

"I said to him quite plainly — the public inter-
ests—"

Auberon turned on Wayne with violence.

"What the devil is all this? What am I
saying? What are you saying? Have you
hypnotised me? Curse your uncanny blue
eyes! Let me go. Give me back my sense
of humour. Give it me back. Give it me back,
I say!"

"I solemnly assure you," said Wayne, uneasily,
1 20

Enter a Lunatic

with a gesture, as if feeling all over himself, "that
I haven't got it."

The King fell back in his chair, and went into
a roar of Rabelaisian laughter.

"I don't think you have," he cried.

121

BOOK III

CHAPTER I — The Mental Condition of
Adam Wayne

A LITTLE while after the King's acces-
sion a small book of poems appeared,
called "Hymns on the Hill." They
were not good poems, nor was the .book
successful, but it attracted a certain amount
of attention from one particular school of
critics. The King himself, who was a mem-
ber of the school, reviewed it in his capacity
of literary critic to "Straight from the
Stables," a sporting journal. They were known
as the Hammock School, because it had been cal-
culated malignantly by an enemy that no less
than thirteen of their delicate criticisms had
begun with the words, "I read this book in a
hammock: half asleep in the sleepy sunlight,
I . . . "; after that there were important
differences. Under these conditions they liked
everything, but especially everything silly.
"Next to authentic goodness in a book," they
said — "next to authentic goodness in a book
(and that, alas! we never find) we desire a rich
badness." Thus it happened that their praise
(as indicating the presence of a rich badness)
was not universally sought after, and authors

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The Napoleon of Notting Hill

became a little disquieted when they found the
eye of the Hammock School fixed upon them with
peculiar favour.

The peculiarity of "Hymns on the Hill"
was the celebration of the poetry of London as
distinct from the poetry of the country. This
sentiment or affectation, was of course, not un-
common in the twentieth century, nor was it,
although sometimes exaggerated, and sometimes
artificial, by any means without a great truth
at its root, for there is one respect in which
a town must be more poetical than the country,
since it is closer to the spirit of man; for
London, if it be not one of the masterpieces of
man, is at least one of his sins. A street is
really more poetical than a meadow, because
a street has a secret. A street is going some-
where, and a meadow nowhere. But, in the
case of the book called "Hymns on the Hill,"
there was another peculiarity, which the King
pointed out with great acumen in his review. He
was naturally interested in the matter, for
he had himself published a volume of lyrics
about London under his pseudonym of "Daisy
Daydream."

This difference, as the King pointed out, con-
sisted in the fact that, while mere artificers like
"Daisy Daydream" (on whose elaborate style the

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Mental Condition of Adam Wayne

King, over his signature of "Thunderbolt,"
was perhaps somewhat too severe) thought to
praise London by comparing it to the country —
using nature, that is, as a background from which
all poetical images had to be drawn — the more
robust author of "Hymns on the Hill" praised
the country, or nature, by comparing it to the
town, and used the town itself as a background.
"Take," said the critic, "the typically feminine
lines, To the Inventor of The Hansom Cab' —

'Poet, whose cunning carved this amorous shell,
Where twain may dwell.'

"Surely," wrote the King, "no one but a
woman could have written those lines. A
woman has always a weakness for nature; with
her, art is only beautiful as an echo or shadow
of it. She is praising the hansom cab by
theme and theory, but her soul is still a child by
the sea, picking up shells. She can never be
utterly of the town, as a man can; indeed, do
we not speak (with sacred propriety) of 'a
man about town'? Who ever spoke of a
woman about town? However much, physically,
'about town' a woman may be, she still
models herself on nature; she tries to carry
nature with her; she bids grasses to grow
on her head, and furry beasts to bite her about

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The Napoleon of Notting Hill

the throat. In the heart of a dim city, she
models her hat on a flaring cottage garden of
flowers. We, with our nobler civic sentiment,
model ours on a chimney pot ; the ensign of civili-
sation. And rather than be without birds, she
will commit massacre, that she may turn
her head into a tree, with dead birds to sing
on it."

This kind of thing went on for several pages,
and then the critic remembered his subject, and
returned to it.

"Poet, whose cunning carved this amorous shell.
Where twain may dwell."

"The peculiarity of these fine though femi-
nine lines," continued "Thunderbolt," "is, as
we have said, that they praise the hansom cab
by comparing it to the shell, to a natural thing.
Now, hear the author of 'Hymns on the Hill,'
and how he deals with the same subject. In
his fine nocturne, entitled 'The Last Omni-
bus/ he relieves the rich and poignant melancholy
of the theme by a sudden sense of rushing at the
end —

•The wind round the old street corner
Swung sudden and quick as a cab.'

"Here the distinction is obvious. 'Daisy
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Mental Condition of Adam Wayne

Daydream' thinks it a great compliment to a
hansom cab to be compared to one of the spiral
chambers of the sea. And the author of
'Hymns on the Hill' thinks it a great compli-
ment to the immortal whirlwind to be compared
to a hackney coach. He surely is the real
admirer of London. We have no space to speak
of all his perfect applications of the idea; of the
poem in which, for instance, a lady's eyes are
compared, not to stars, but to two perfect street-
lamps guiding the wanderer. We have no
space to speak of the fine lyric, recalling the
Elizabethan spirit, in which the poet, instead of
saying that the rose and the lily contend in her
complexion, says, with a purer modernism, that
the red omnibus of Hammersmith and the
white omnibus of Fulham fight there for the
mastery. How perfect the image of two contend-
ing omnibuses !"

Here, somewhat abruptly, the review con-
cluded, probably because the King had to send
off his copy at that moment, as he was in some
want of money. But the King was a very good
critic, whatever he may have been as King, and
he had, to a considerable extent, hit the right
nail on the head. "Hymns on the Hill" was not
at all like the poems originally published in

praise of the poetry of London. And the reason

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The Napoleon of Notting Hill

was that it was really written by a man who
had seen nothing else but London, and who
regarded it, therefore, as the universe. It was
written by a raw, red-headed lad of sev-
enteen, named Adam Wayne, who had been
born in Notting Hill. An accident in his
seventh year prevented his being taken away to
the seaside, and thus his whole life had been
passed in his own Pump Street, and in its neigh-
bourhood. And the consequence was, that he
saw the street-lamps as things quite as eternal as
the stars; the two fires were mingled. He saw
the houses as things enduring, like the moun-
tains, and so he wrote about them as one would
write about mountains. Nature puts on a dis-
guise when she speaks to every man; to
this man she put on the disguise of Notting
Hill. Nature would mean to a poet born
in the Cumberland hills, a stormy skyline
and sudden rocks. Nature would mean to a
poet born in the Essex flats, a waste of
splendid waters and splendid sunsets. So
nature meant to this man Wayne a line of
violet roofs and lemon lamps, the chiaroscuro of
the town. He did not think it clever or
funny to praise the shadows and colours of the
town; he had seen no other shadows or colours,
and so he praised them — because they were

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Mental Condition of Adam Wayne

shadows and colours. He saw all this because
he was a poet, though in practice a bad poet.
It is too often forgotten that just as a bad man
is nevertheless a man, so a bad poet is neverthe-
less a poet.

Mr. Wayne's little volume of verse was a com-
plete failure; and he submitted to the decision
of fate with a quite rational humility, went back
to his work, which was that of a draper's
assistant, and wrote no more. He still retained
his feeling about the town of Netting Hill,
because he could not possibly have any other
feeling, because it was the back and base of
his brain. But he does not seem to have made
any particular attempt to express it or insist
upon it.

He was a genuine natural mystic, one of
those who live on the border of fairyland. But
he was perhaps the first to realise how often
the boundary of fairyland runs through a
crowded city. Twenty feet from him (for he
was very short-sighted) the red and white and
yellow suns of the gas-lights thronged and
melted into each other like an orchard of
fiery trees, the beginning of the woods of
elf-land.

But, oddly enougtt, it was because he was a
small poet that he came to his strange and

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

isolated triumph. It was because he was a
failure in literature that he became a portent in
English history. He was one of those to whom
nature has given the desire without the power
of artistic expression. He had been a dumb
poet from his cradle. He might have been so
to his grave, and carried unuttered into the dark-
ness a treasure of new and sensational song.
But he was born under the lucky star of a
single coincidence. He happened to be at the
head of his dingy municipality at the time of
the King's jest, at the time when all munici-
palities were suddenly commanded to break out
into banners and flowers. Out of the long
procession of the silent poets who have been
passing since the beginning of the world, this
one man found himself in the midst of an
heraldic vision, in which he could act and speak
and live lyrically. While the author and the
victims alike treated the whole matter as a silly
public charade, this one man, by taking it
seriously, sprang suddenly into a throne of
artistic omnipotence. Armour, music, stand-
ards, watch-fires, the noise of drums, all
the theatrical properties were thrown before him.
This one poor rhymster, having burnt his own
rhymes, began to live that life of open air and
acted poetry of which all the poets of the earth

132

Mental Condition of Adam Wayne

have dreamed in vain ; the life for which the Iliad
is only a cheap substitute.

Upwards from his abstracted childhood, Adam
Wayne had grown strongly and silently in a
certain quality or capacity which is in modern
cities almost entirely artificial, but which can be
natural, and was primarily almost brutally
natural in him, the quality or capacity of
patriotism. It exists, like other virtues and
vices, in a certain undiluted reality. It is not
confused with all kinds of other things. A
child speaking of his country or his village
may make every mistake in Mandeville or
tell every lie in Munchausen, but in his state-
ment there will be no psychological lies any
more than there can be in a good song. Adam
Wayne, as a boy, had for his dull streets in
Notting Hill the ultimate and ancient senti-
ment that went out to Athens or Jerusalem. He
knew the secret of the passion, those secrets
which make real old national songs sound so
strange to our civilisation. He knew that real
patriotism tends to sing about sorrows and
forlorn hopes much more than about victory.
He knew that in proper names themselves is
half the poetry of all national poems. Above
all, he knew the supreme psychological fact
about patriotism, as certain in connection with

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The Napoleon of Notting Hill

it as that a fine shame comes to all lovers, the
fact that the patriot never under any circum-
stances boasts of the largeness of his country,
but always, and of necessity, boasts of the
smallness of it.

All this he knew, not because he was a
philosopher or a genius, but because he was a
child. Any one who cares to walk up a side
slum like Pump Street, can see a little Adam
claiming to be king of a paving-stone. And
he will always be proudest if the stone is
almost too narrow for him to keep his feet
inside it.

It was while he was in such a dream of
defensive battle, marking out some strip of
street or fortress of steps as the limit of his
haughty claim, that the King had met him, and,
with a few words flung in mockery, ratified
for ever the strange boundaries of his soul.
Thenceforward the fanciful idea of the defence
of Notting Hill in war became to him a thing as
solid as eating or drinking or lighting a pipe.
He disposed his meals for it, altered his plans
for it, lay awake in the night and went over it
again. Two or three shops were to him an
arsenal; an area was to him a moat; corners of
balconies and turns of stone steps were points
for the location of a culverin or an archer. It is

134

Mental Condition of Adam Wayne

almost impossible to convey to any ordinary
imagination the degree to which he had trans-
mitted the leaden London landscape to a
romantic gold. The process began almost in
babyhood, and became habitual like a literal
madness. It was felt most keenly at night,
when London is really herself, when her lights
shine in the dark like the eyes of innumerable
cats, and the outline of the dark houses has the
bold simplicity of blue hills. But for him the
night revealed instead of concealing, and he
read all the blank hours of morning and after-
noon, by a contradictory phrase, in the light
of that darkness. To this man, at any rate, the
inconceivable had happened. The artificial city
had become to him nature, and he felt the curb-
stones and gas-lamps as things as ancient as the
sky.

One instance may suffice. Walking along
Pump Street with a friend, he said, as he
gazed dreamily at the iron fence of a little
front garden, "How those railings stir one's
blood."

His friend, who was also a great intellectual
admirer, looked at them painfully, but without
any particular emotion. He was so troubled
about it that he went back quite a large
number of times on quiet evenings and stared

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

at the railings, waiting for something to happen
to his blood, but without success. At last he
took refuge in asking Wayne himself. He
discovered that the ecstacy lay in the one
point he had never noticed about the railings
even after his six visits, the fact that they
were like the great majority of others in
London, shaped at the top after the manner
of a spear. As a child, Wayne had half
unconsciously compared them with the spears in
pictures of Lancelot and St. George, and
had grown up under the shadow of the graphic
association. Now, whenever he looked at
them, they were simply the serried weapons
that made a hedge of steel round the sacred
homes of Notting Hill. He could not have
cleansed his mind of that meaning even if he
tried. It was not a fanciful comparison, or
anything like it. It would not have been true
to say that the familiar railings reminded him of
spears; it would have been far truer to say that
the familiar spears occasionally reminded him of
railings.

A couple of days after his interview with the
King, Adam Wayne was pacing like a caged
lion in front of five shops that occupied the
upper end of the disputed street. They were a
grocer's, a chemist's, a barber's, an old curiosity

136

Mental Condition of Adam Wayne

shop, and a toy-shop that sold also newspapers.
It was these five shops which his childish
fastidiousness had first selected as the essentials
of the Netting Hill campaign, the citadel of the
city. If Notting Hill was the heart of the
universe, and Pump Street was the heart of
Notting Hill, this was the heart of Pump
Street. The fact that they were all small
and side by side realised that feeling for a
formidable comfort and compactness which, as
we have said, was the heart of his patriotism
and of all patriotism. The grocer (who had a
wine and spirit license) was included because he
could provision the garrison; the old curiosity
shop because it contained enough swords, pis-
tols, partisans, cross-bows, and blunderbusses
to arm a whole irregular regiment; the toy and
paper shop because Wayne thought a free press
an essential centre for the soul of Pump Street;
the chemist's to cope with outbreaks of dis-
ease among the besieged ; and the barber's because
it was in the middle of all the rest, and the
barber's son was an intimate friend and spiritual
affinity.

It was a cloudless October evening settling
down through purple into pure silver around the
roofs and chimneys of the steep little street,
which looked black and sharp and dramatic. In

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The Napoleon of Notting Hill

the deep shadows the gas-lit shop fronts
gleamed like five fires in a row, and before
them, darkly outlined like a ghost against
some purgatorial furnaces, passed to and fro the
tall bird-like figure and eagle nose of Adam
Wayne.

He swung his stick restlessly, and seemed fit-
fully talking to himself.

"There are, after all, enigmas," he said, "even
to the man who has faith. There are doubts
that remain even after the true philosophy is
completed in every rung and rivet. And here
is one of them. Is the normal human need,
the normal human condition, higher or lower
than those special states of the soul which
call out a doubtful and dangerous glory?
those special powers of knowledge or sacrifice
which are made possible only by the existence of
evil? Which should come first to our affec-
tions, the enduring sanities of peace or the
half-maniacal virtues of battle? Which should
come first, the man great in the daily round or
the man great in emergency? Which should
come first, to return to the enigma before me,
the grocer or the chemist? Which is more
certainly the stay of the city, the swift chival-
rous chemist or the benignant all-providing
grocer? In such ultimate spiritual doubts

138

Mental Condition of Adam Wayne

it is only possible to choose a side by the
higher instincts and to abide the issue. In
any case, I have made my choice. May I be
pardoned if I choose wrongly, but I choose the
grocer."

"Good morning, sir," said the grocer, who
was a middle-aged man, partially bald, with harsh
red whiskers and beard, and forehead lined with
all the cares of the small tradesman. "What can
I do for you, sir?"

Wayne removed his hat on entering the shop,
with a ceremonious gesture, which, slight as
it was, made the tradesman eye him with the
beginnings of wonder.

"I come, sir," he said soberly, "to appeal to
your patriotism."

"Why, sir," said the grocer, "that sounds like
the times when I was a boy and we used to have
elections."

"You will have them again," said Wayne,
firmly, "and far greater things. Listen, MV.
Mead. I know the temptations which a grocer
has to a too cosmopolitan philosophy. I can
imagine what it must be to sit all day as you do
surrounded with wares from all the ends of the
earth, from strange seas that we have never
sailed and strange forests that we could not
even picture. No Eastern king ever had such

139

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

argosies or such cargoes coming from the sun-
rise and the sunset, and Solomon in all his
glory was not enriched like one of you. India
is at your elbow," he cried, lifting his voice and
pointing his stick at a drawer of rice, the grocer
making a movement of some alarm, "China is
before you, Demerara is behind you, America is
above your head, and at this very moment, like
some old Spanish admiral, you hold Tunis in your
hands."

Mr. Mead dropped the box of dates which he
was just lifting, and then picked it up again
vaguely.

Wayne went on with a heightened colour, but in
a lowered voice,

"I know, I say, the temptations of so inter-
national, so universal a vision of wealth. I
know that it must be your danger not to fall
like many tradesmen into too dusty and me-
chanical a narrowness, but rather to be too
broad, to be too general, too liberal. If a
narrow nationalism be the danger of the pastry-
cook, who makes his own wares under his own
heavens, no less is cosmopolitanism the danger of
the grocer. But I come to you in the name of
that patriotism which no wanderings or en-
lightenments should ever wholly extinguish,
and I ask you to remember Notting Hill. For,

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Mental Condition of Adam Wayne

after all, in this cosmopolitan magnificence, she
has played no small part. Your dates may
come from the tall palms of Barbary, your
sugar from the strange islands of the tropics,
your tea from the secret villages of the Empire
of the Dragon. That this room might be
furnished, forests may have been spoiled under
the Southern Cross, and leviathans speared
under the Polar Star. But you yourself —
surely no inconsiderable treasure — you yourself,
the brain that wields these vast interests — you
yourself, at least, have grown to strength and
wisdom between these grey houses and under
this rainy sky. This city which made you, and
thus made your fortunes, is threatened with war.
Come forth and tell to the ends of the earth this
lesson. Oil is from the North and fruits from
the South; rices are from India and spices from
Ceylon; sheep are from New Zealand and men
from Netting Hill."

The grocer sat for some little while, with dim
eyes and his mouth open, looking rather like a
fish. Then he scratched the back of his head, and
said nothing. Then he said —

"Anything out of the shop, sir?"

Wayne looked round in a dazed way. Seeing
a pile of tins of pine-apple chunks, he waved his
stick generally towards them.

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The Napoleon of Notting Hill

"Yes," he said, "I'll take those."

"All those, sir?" said the grocer, with greatly
increased interest.

"Yes, yes; all those," replied Wayne, still a
little bewildered, like a man splashed with cold
water.

"Very good, sir; thank you, sir," said the
grocer with animation. "You may count upon
my patriotism, sir."

"I count upon it already," said Wayne, and
passed out into the gathering night.

The grocer put the box of dates back in its
place.

"What a nice fellow he is," he said. "It's odd
how often they are nice. Much nicer than those
as are all right."

Meanwhile Adam Wayne stood outside the
glowing chemist's shop, unmistakably waver-
ing.

"What a weakness it is," he muttered.
"I have never got rid of it from childhood.
The fear of this magic shop. The grocer is rich,
he is romantic, he is poetical in the truest sense,
but he is not — no, he is not supernatural.
But the chemist! All the other shops stand in
Notting Hill, but this stands in Elf-land. Look
at those great burning bowls of colour. It
must be from them that God paints the sunsets.

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Mental Condition of Adam Wayne

It is superhuman, and the superhuman is all the
more uncanny when it is beneficent. That is the
root of the fear of God. I am afraid. But I must
be a man and enter."

He was a man, and entered. A short, dark
young man was behind the counter with spec-
tacles, and greeted him with a bright but entirely
business-like smile.

"A fine evening, sir," he said.

"Fine, indeed, strange Father," said Adam,
stretching his hands somewhat forward. "It is
on such clear and mellow nights that your shop
is most itself. Then they appear most perfect,
those moons of green and gold and crimson,
which from afar, oft guide the pilgrim of pain
and sickness to this house of merciful witch-
craft."

"Can I get you anything?" asked the
chemist.

"Let me see," said Wayne, in a friendly
but vague manner. "Let me have some Sal
Volatile."

"Eightpence, tenpence, or one and sixpence
a bottle?" said the young man genially.

"One and six — one and six," replied Wayne,
with a wild submissiveness. "I come to ask you,
Mr. Bowles, a terrible question."

He paused and collected himself.
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The Napoleon of Notting Hill

"It is necessary," he muttered — "it is neces-
sary to be tactful, and to suit the appeal to each
profession in turn.

"I come," he resumed aloud, "to ask you a
question which goes to the roots of your miracu-
lous toils. Mr. Bowles, shall all this witchery
cease?" And he waved his stick around the
shop.

Meeting with no answer, he continued with
animation —

"In Notting Hill we have felt to its core the
elfish mystery of your profession. And now Not-
ting Hill itself is threatened."

"Anything more, sir?" asked the chemist.

"Oh," said Wayne, somewhat disturbed —
"oh, what is it chemists sell? Quinine, I
think. Thank you. Shall it be destroyed? I
have met these men of Bayswater and North
Kensington — Mr. Bowles, they are materialists.
They see no witchery in your work, even
when it is brought within their own borders. They
think the chemist is commonplace. They think
him human."

The chemist appeared to pause, only a mo-
ment, to take in the insult, and immediately
said —

"And the next article, please?"

"Alum," said the Provost, wildly. "I

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Mental Condition of Adam Wayne

resume. It is in this sacred town alone that
your priesthood is reverenced. Therefore, when
you fight for us you fight not only for yourself,
but for everything you typify. You fight not
only for Notting Hill, but for Fairyland, for as
surely as Buck and Barker and such men hold
sway, the sense of Fairyland in some strange man-
ner diminishes."

"Anything more, sir ?" asked Mr. Bowles, with
unbroken cheerfulness.

"Oh yes, jujubes — Gregory powder — mag-
nesia. The danger is imminent. In all this
matter I have felt that I fought not merely
for my own city (though to that I owe all
my blood), but for all places in which these
great ideas could prevail. I am fighting not
merely for Notting Hill, but for Bayswater
itself; for North Kensington itself. For if
the gold-hunters prevail, these also will lose
all their ancient sentiments and all the mystery
of their national soul. I know I can count upon
you/'

"Oh, yes, sir," said the chemist, with great
animation, "we are always glad to oblige a good
customer."

Adam Wayne went out of the shop with a deep
sense of fulfilment of soul.

"It is so fortunate," he said, "to have
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The Napoleon of Notting Hill

tact, to be able to play upon the peculiar
talents and specialities, the cosmopolitanism of
the grocer and the world-old necromancy
of the chemist. Where should I be without
tact?"

146

CHAPTER II — The Remarkable Mr. Turn-
bull

AFTER two more interviews with shop-
men, however, the patriot's confi-
dence in his own psychological
diplomacy began vaguely to wane. Despite
the care with which he considered the peculiar
rationale and the peculiar glory of each sepa-
rate shop, there seemed to be something unre-
sponsive about the shopmen. Whether it was
a dark resentment against the uninitiate for
peeping into their masonic magnificence, he could
not quite conjecture.

His conversation with the man who kept
the shop of curiosities had begun encourag-
ingly. The man who kept the shop of curiosi-
ties had indeed enchanted him with a phrase.
He was standing drearily at the door of his
shop, a wrinkled man with a grey pointed
beard, evidently a gentleman who had come down
in the world.

"And how does your commerce go, you
strange guardian of the past?" said Wayne,
affably.

"Well, sir, not very well," replied the man,
with that patient voice of his class which is one

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The Napoleon of Notting Hill

of the most heart-breaking things in the world.
"Things are terribly quiet."

Wayne's eyes shone suddenly.

"A great saying," he said, "worthy of a man
whose merchandise is human history. Terribly
quiet; that is in two words the spirit of this
age, as I have felt it from my cradle. I some-
times wondered how many other people felt the
oppression of this union between quietude and
terror. I see blank well-ordered streets and
men in black moving about inoffensively,
sullenly. It goes on day after day, day after
day, and nothing happens; but to me it is like
a dream from wrhich I might wake screaming.
To me the straightness of our life is the
straightness of a thin cord stretched tight. Its
stillness is terrible. It might snap with a noise
like thunder. And you who sit, amid the debris
of the great wars, you who sit, as it were,
upon a battlefield, you know that war was less
terrible than this evil peace; you know that
the idle lads who carried those swords under
Francis or Elizabeth, the rude Squire or
Baron who swung that mace about in Picardy
or Northumberland battles, may have been
terribly noisy, but wrere not like us, terribly
quiet."

Whether it was a faint embarrassment of con-
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The Remarkable Mr. Turribull

science as to the original source and date of the
weapons referred to, or merely an engrained
depression, the guardian of the past looked, if
anything, a little more worried.

"But I do not think," continued Wayne,
"that this horrible silence of modernity will
last, though I think for the present it will
increase. What a farce is this modern liberality.
Freedom of speech means practically in our
modern civilisation that we must only talk
about unimportant things. We must not talk
about religion, for that is illiberal; we must not
talk about bread and cheese, for that is talking
shop; we must not talk about death, for that is
depressing; we must not talk about birth, for
that is indelicate. It cannot last. Something
must break this strange indifference, this
strange dreamy egoism, this strange loneli-
ness of millions in a crowd. Something
must break it. Why should it not be you and
I? Can you do nothing else but guard
relics?"

The shopman wore a gradually clearing expres-
sion, which would have led those unsympathetic
with the cause of the Red Lion to think that the
last sentence was the only one to which he had
attached any meaning.

"I am rather old to go into a new business,"
149

The Napoleon of Hotting Hill

he said, "and I don't quite know what to be
either."

"Why not," said Wayne, gently having reached
the crisis of his delicate persuasion — "why not be
a Colonel?"

It was at this point, in all probability, that the
interview began to yield more disappointing
results. The man appeared inclined at first to
regard the suggestion of becoming a Colonel
as outside the sphere of immediate and relevant
discussion. A long exposition of the inevit-
able war of independence, coupled with the
purchase of a doubtful sixteenth-century sword
for an exaggerated price, seemed to resettle
matters. Wayne left the shop, however, some-
what infected with the melancholy of its
owner.

That melancholy was completed at the
barber's.

"Shaving, sir?" inquired that artist from inside
his shop.

"War!" replied Wayne, standing on the
threshold.

"I beg your pardon," said the other, sharply.

"War!" said Wayne, warmly. "But not for
anything inconsistent with the beautiful and
the civilised arts. War for beauty. War for
society. War for peace. A great chance is

150

The Remarkable Mr. Turribull

offered you of repelling that slander which,
in defiance of the lives of so many artists,
attributes poltroonery to those who beautify
and polish the surface of our lives. Why should
not hairdressers be heroes? Why should
not—"

"Now, you get out," said the barber, irascibly.
"We don't want any of your sort here. You get
out."

And he came forward with the desperate
annoyance of a mild person when enraged.

Adam Wayne laid his hand for a moment on
the sword, then dropped it.

"Notting Hill," he said, "will need her
bolder sons ;" and he turned gloomily to the
toy-shop.

It was one of those queer little shops so
constantly seen in the side streets of London,
which must be called toy-shops only because toys
upon the whole predominate; for the re-
mainder of goods seem to consist of almost
everything else in the world — tobacco, exercise-
books, sweet-stuff, novelettes, halfpenny paper
clips, halfpenny pencil sharpeners, bootlaces, and
cheap fireworks. It also sold newspapers, and
a row of dirty-looking posters hung along the
front of it.

"I am afraid," said Wayne, as he entered,
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The Napoleon of Notting Hill

"that I am not getting on with these tradesmen
as I should. Is it that I have neglected to rise
to the full meaning of their work ? Is there some
secret buried in each of these shops which no mere
poet can discover ?"

He stepped to the counter with a depression
which he rapidly conquered as he addressed the
man on the other side of it, — a man of short
stature, and hair prematurely white, and the look
of a large baby.

"Sir," said Wayne, "I am going from house
to house in this street of ours, seeking to stir
up some sense of the danger which now threatens
our city. Nowhere have I felt my duty so diffi-
cult as here. For the toy-shop keeper has
to do with all that remains to us of Eden before
the first wars began. You sit here meditating
continually upon the wants of that wonderful
time when every staircase leads to the stars, and
every garden-path to the other end of nowhere.
Is it thoughtlessly, do you think, that I strike
the dark old drum of peril in the paradise of
children? But consider a moment; do not
condemn me hastily. Even that paradise itself
contains the rumour or beginning of that danger,
just as the Eden that was made for perfection
contained the terrible tree. For judge childhood,
even by your own arsenal of its pleasures. You

152

The Remarkable Mr. Turnbull

keep bricks; you make yourself thus, doubt-
less, the witness of the constructive instinct
older than the destructive. You keep dolls;
you make yourself the priest of that divine
idolatry. You keep Noah's Arks; you per-
petuate the memory of the salvation of all life as
a precious, an irreplaceable thing. But do you
keep only, sir, the symbols of this prehistoric
sanity, this childish rationality of the earth ? Do
you not keep more terrible things? What are
those boxes, seemingly of lead soldiers, that
I see in that glass case? Are they not wit-
nesses to that terror and beauty, that
desire for a lovely death, which could not
be excluded even from the immortality of
Eden? Do not despise the lead soldiers, Mr.
Turnbull."

"I don't," said Mr. Turnbull, of the toy-shop,
shortly, but with great emphasis.

"I am glad to hear it," replied Wayne. "I
confess that I feared for my military schemes
the awful innocence of your profession. How
I thought to myself, will this man, used only to
the wooden swords that give pleasure, think
of the steel swords that give pain? But I am
at least partly reassured. Your tone suggests
to me that I have at least the entry of a gate of
your fairyland — the gate through which the

153

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

soldiers enter, for it cannot be denied — I ought,
sir, no longer to deny, that it is of soldiers that
I come to speak. Let your gentle employment
make you merciful towards the troubles of the
world. Let your own silvery experience tone
down our sanguine sorrows. For there is war in
Notting Hill."

The little toy-shop keeper sprang up suddenly,
slapping his fat hands like two fans on the
counter.

"War?" he cried. "Not really, sir? Is
it true? Oh, what a joke! Oh, what a sight for
sore eyes !"

Wayne was almost taken aback by this out-
burst.

"I am delighted," he stammered. "I had no
notion — "

He sprang out of the way just in time to avoid
Mr. Turnbull, who took a flying leap over
the counter and dashed to the front of the
shop.

"You look here, sir," he said; "you just look
here."

He came back with two of the torn posters
in his hand which were flapping outside his
shop.

"Look at those, sir," he said, and flung them
down on the counter.

154

The Remarkable Mr. Turribull

Wayne bent over them, and read on one —

"LAST FIGHTING.

REDUCTION OF THE CENTRAL DERVISH CITY.
REMARKABLE, ETC/'

On the other he read —

"LAST SMALL REPUBLIC ANNEXED.

NICARAGUAN CAPITAL SURRENDERS AFTER A

MONTH'S FIGHTING.

GREAT SLAUGHTER/'

Wayne bent over them again, evidently
puzzled; then he looked at the dates. They
were both dated in August fifteen years before.

"Why do you keep these old things?" he said,
startled entirely out of his absurd tact of mysti-
cism. "Why do you hang them outside your
shop?"

"Because," said the other, simply, "they are
the records of the last war. You men-
tioned war just now. It happens to be my
hobby."

Wayne lifted his large blue eyes with an infan-
tile wonder.

"Come witH me," said Turnbull, shortly,
and led him into a parlour at the back of the
shop.

155

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

In the centre of the parlour stood a large
deal table. On it were set rows and rows of
the tin and lead soldiers which were part of the
shopkeeper's stock. The visitor would have
thought nothing of it if it had not been for
a certain odd grouping of them, which did not
seem either entirely commercial or entirely
haphazard.

"You are acquainted, no doubt/' said Turn-
bull, turning his big eyes upon Wayne — "you
are acquainted, no doubt, with the arrangement
of the American and Nicaraguan troops in the
last battle." And he waved his hand towards
the table.

"I am afraid not," said Wayne. "I—"

"Ah, you were at that time occupied too much,
perhaps, with the Dervish affair. You will
find it in this corner." And he pointed to
a part of the floor where there was another
arrangement of children's soldiers grouped here
and there.

"You seem," said Wayne, "to be interested in
military matters."

"I am interested in nothing else," answered the
toy-shop keeper, simply.

Wayne appeared convulsed with a singular,
suppressed excitement.

"In that case," he said, "I may approach you
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The Remarkable Mr. Turnbull

with an unusual degree of confidence. Touch-
ing the matter of the defence of Notting Hill,
j "

"Defence of Notting Hill? Yes, sir. This
way, sir," said Turnbull, with great perturba-
tion. "Just step into this side room;" and he
led Wayne into another apartment, in which the
table was entirely covered with an arrange-
ment of children's bricks. A second glance at
it told Wayne that the bricks were arranged in
the form of a precise and perfect plan of Notting
Hill. "Sir," said Turnbull, impressively, "you
have, by a kind of accident, hit upon the whole
secret of my life. As a boy, I grew up among
the last wars of the world, when Nicaragua was
taken and the dervishes wiped out. And I
adopted it as a hobby, sir, as you might adopt
astronomy or bird-stuffing. I had no ill-will
to any one, but I was interested in war as a
science, as a game. And suddenly I was bowled
out. The big Powers of the world, having
swallowed up all the small ones, came to that
confounded agreement, and there was no more
war. There was nothing more for me to do but
to do what I do now — to read the old cam-
paigns in dirty old newspapers, and to work them
out with tin soldiers. One other thing had
occurred to me. I thought it an amusing fancy

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The Napoleon of Notting Hill

to make a plan of how this district of ours ought
to be defended if it were ever attacked. It seems
to interest you too."

"If it were ever attacked," repeated Wayne,
awed into an almost mechanical enunciation.
"Mr. Turnbull, it is attacked. Thank Heaven,
I am bringing to at least one human being the
news that is at bottom the only good news to
any son of Adam. Your life has not been
useless. Your work has not been play. Now,
when the hair is already grey on your head,
Turnbull, you shall have your youth. God
has not destroyed it, He has only deferred it.
Let us sit down here, and you shall explain to me
this military map of Notting Hill. For you and
I have to defend Notting Hill together."

Mr. Turnbull looked at the other for a mo-
ment, then hesitated, and then sat down
beside the bricks and the stranger. He did
not rise again for seven hours, when the dawn
broke.

The headquarters of Provost Adam Wayne
and his Commander-in-Chief consisted of a small
and somewhat unsuccessful milk-shop at the
corner of Pump Street. The blank white
morning had only just begun to break over the
blank London buildings when Wayne and

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The Remarkable Mr. Turnbull

Turnbull were to be found seated in the cheer-
less and unswept shop. Wayne had something
feminine in his character; he belonged to that
class of persons who forget their meals when
anything interesting is in hand. He had had
nothing for sixteen hours but hurried glasses of
milk, and, with a glass standing empty beside
him, he was writing and sketching and dotting
and crossing out with inconceivable rapidity
with a pencil and a piece of paper. Turnbull
was of that more masculine type in which a
sense of responsibility increases the appetite,
and with his sketch-map beside him he was
dealing strenuously with a pile of sandwiches in
a paper packet, and a tankard of ale from the
tavern opposite, whose shutters had just been
taken down. Neither of them spoke, and there
was no sound in the living stillness except
the scratching of Wayne's pencil and the squeal-
ing of an aimless-looking cat. At length Wayne
broke the silence by saying —

"Seventeen pounds, eight shillings and nine-
pence."

Turnbull nodded and put his head in the tank-
ard.

"That," said Wayne, "is not counting the five
pounds you took yesterday. What did you do
with it?"

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The Napoleon of dotting Hill

"Ah, that is rather interesting!" replied Turn-
bull, with his mouth full. "I used that five pounds
in a kindly and philanthropic act."

Wayne was gazing with mystification in his
queer and innocent eyes.

"I used that five pounds," continued the other,
"in giving no less than forty little London boys
rides in hansom cabs."

"Are you insane ?" asked the Provost.

"It is only my light touch," returned Turn-
bull. "These hansom-cab rides will raise the
tone — raise the tone, my dear fellow — of our
London youths, widen their horizon, brace
their nervous system, make them acquainted
with the various public monuments of our great
city. Education, Wayne, education. How many
excellent thinkers have pointed out that political
reform is useless until we produce a cultured pop-
ulace. So that twenty years hence, when these
boys are grown up — "

"Mad!" said Wayne, laying down his pencil;
"and five pounds gone!"

"You are in error," explained Turnbull. "You
grave creatures can never be brought to under-
stand how much quicker work really goes
with the assistance of nonsense and good meals.
Stripped of its decorative beauties, my statement
was strictly accurate. Last night I gave forty

160

The Remarkable Mr. Turribull

half-crowns to forty little boys, and sent them
all over London to take hansom cabs. I told
them in every case to tell the cabman to
bring them to this spot. In half an hour from
now the declaration of war will be posted up. At
the same time the cabs will have begun to
come in, you will have ordered out the guard,
the little boys will drive up in state, we shall
commandeer the horses for cavalry, use the
cabs for barricade, and give the men the choice
between serving in our ranks and detention in
our basements and cellars. The little boys we
can use as scouts. The main thing is that we
start the war with an advantage unknown in all
the other armies — horses. And now," he said,
finishing his beer, "I will go and drill the
troops."

And he walked out of the milk-shop, leaving
the Provost staring.

A minute or two afterwards, the Provost
laughed. He only laughed once or twice in
his life, and then he did it in a queer way as if
it were an art he had not mastered. Even he
saw something funny in the preposterous coup of
the half-crowns and the little boys. He did not
see the monstrous absurdity of the whole
policy and the whole war. He enjoyed it
seriously as a crusade, that is, he enjoyed it

161

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

far more than any joke can be enjoyed. Turn-
bull enjoyed it partly as a joke, even more
perhaps as a reversion from the things he hated
— modernity and monotony and civilisation. To
break up the vast machinery of modern life and
use the fragments as engines of war, to make the
barricade of omnibuses and points of vantage of
chimney-pots, was to him a game worth infinite
risk and trouble. He had that rational and delib-
erate preference which will always to the end
trouble the peace of the world, the rational and
deliberate preference for a short life and a merry
one.

162

CHAPTER III — The Experiment of Mr.
Buck

AN earnest and eloquent petition was
sent up to the King signed with
the names of Wilson, Barker, Buck,
Swindon and others. It urged that at the
forthcoming conference to be held in his
Majesty's presence touching the final disposi-
tion of the property in Pump Street, it
might be held not inconsistent with political
decorum and with the unutterable respect they
entertained for his Majesty if they appeared in
ordinary morning dress, without the costume
decreed for them as Provosts. So it happened
that the company appeared at that council in
frock coats and that the King himself limited his
love of ceremony to appearing (after his not
unusual manner), in evening dress with one
order; — in this case not the Garter, but the button
of the Club of Old Clipper's Best Pals, a
decoration obtained (with difficulty) from a
half-penny boy's paper. Thus also it happened
that the only spot of colour in the room
was Adam Wayne, who entered in great
dignity with the great red robes and the great
sword.

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The Napoleon of Notting Hill

"We have met," said Auberon, "to decide the
most arduous of modern problems. May we be
successful." And he sat down gravely.

Buck turned his chair a little and flung one
leg over the other.

"Your Majesty," he said, quite good-humour-
edly, "there is only one thing I can't
understand, and that is why this affair is not
settled in five minutes. Here's a small prop-
erty which is worth a thousand to us and is not
worth a hundred to any one else. We offer
the thousand. It's not business-like, I know,
for we ought to get it for less, and it's not reason-
able and it's not fair on us, but I'm damned if I
can see why it's difficult."

"The difficulty may be very simply stated,"
said Wayne. "You may offer a million and it
will be very difficult for you to get Pump
Street."

"But, look here, Mr. Wayne," cried Barker,
striking in with a kind of cold excitement.
"Just look here. You've no right to take up a
position like that. You've a right to stand
out for a bigger price, but you aren't doing
that. You're refusing what you and every sane
man knows to be a splendid offer simply from
malice or spite — it must be malice or spite.
And that kind of thing is really criminal; it's

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The Experiment of Mr. Buck

against the public good. The King's Government
would be justified in forcing you."

With his lean fingers spread on the table he
stared anxiously at Wayne's face, which did not
move.

"In forcing you ... it would," he repeated.

"It shall," said Buck, shortly, turning to the
table with a jerk. "We have done our best to
be decent."

Wayne lifted his large eyes slowly.

"Was it my Lord Buck," he enquired, "who
said that the King of England 'shall' do some-
thing?"

Buck flushed and said testily —

"I mean it must — it ought to, as I say we've
done our best to be generous. I defy any one
to deny it. As it is Mr. Wayne, I don't want
to say a word that's uncivil. I hope it's not
uncivil to say that you can be, and ought to be,
in gaol. It is criminal to stop public works for
a whim. A man might as well burn ten
thousand onions in his front garden or bring
up his children to run naked in the street,
as do what you say you have a right to do.
People have been compelled to sell before
now. The King could compel you, and I hope
he will."

"Until he does," said Wayne, calmly, "the
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The Napoleon of Notting Hill

power and government of this great nation is
on my side and not yours, and I defy you to
defy it."

"In what sense," cried Barker, with his
feverish eyes and hands, "is the Government on
your side?"

With one ringing movement Wayne unrolled a
great parchment on the table. It was decorated
down the sides with wild water-colour sketches of
vestrymen in crowns and wreaths.

"The Charter of the Cities," he began.

Buck exploded in a brutal oath and laughed.

"That tomfool's joke. Haven't we had
enough — "

"And there you sit," cried Wayne, springing
erect and with a voice like a trumpet, "with no
argument but to insult the King before his
face."

Buck rose also with blazing eyes.

"I am hard to bully," he began — and the slow
tones of the King struck in with incomparable
gravity —

"My Lord Buck, I must ask you to remem-
ber that your King is present. It is not often
that he needs to protect himself among his sub-
jects."

Barker turned to him with frantic gestures.

"For God's sake don't back up the madman
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The Experiment of Mr. Buck

now," he implored. "Have your joke another
time. Oh, for Heaven's sake — "

"My Lord Provost of South Kensington," said
King Auberon, steadily. "I do not follow your
remarks which are uttered with a rapidity
unusual at Court. Nor do your well-meant
efforts to convey the rest with your fingers
materially assist me. I say that my Lord
Provost of North Kensington, to whom I spoke,
ought not in the presence of his Sovereign to
speak disrespectfully of his Sovereign's ordi-
nances. Do you disagree?"

Barker turned restlessly in his chair, and Buck
cursed without speaking. The King went on in
a comfortable voice —

"My Lord Provost of Notting Hill, proceed."

Wayne turned his blue eyes on the King, and
to every one's surprise there was a look in them
not of triumph, but of a certain childish distress.

"I am sorry, your Majesty," he said; "I fear
I was more than equally to blame with the
Lord Provost of North Kensington. We were
debating somewhat eagerly, and we both rose
to our feet. I did so first, I am ashamed to say.
The Provost of North Kensington is, there-
fore, comparatively innocent. I beseech your
Majesty to address your rebuke chiefly, at
least, to me. Mr. Buck is not innocent, for

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The Napoleon of Notting Hill

he did no doubt, in the heat of the moment,
speak disrespectfully. But the rest of the dis-
cussion he seems to me to have conducted with
great good temper."

Buck looked genuinely pleased, for business
men are all simple-minded, and have therefore
that degree of communion with fanatics. The
King, for some reason, looked, for the first time
in his life, ashamed.

"This very kind speech of the Provost of Not-
ting Hill," began Buck, pleasantly, "seems to
me to show that we have at last got on to a
friendly footing. Now come, Mr. Wayne.
Five hundred pounds have been offered to you
for a property you admit not to be worth a
hundred. Well, I am a rich man and I won't
be outdone in generosity. Let us say fifteen
hundred pounds, and have done with it. And
let us shake hands." And he rose, glowing and
laughing.

"Fifteen hundred pounds," whispered Mr.
Wilson of Bayswater ; "can we do fifteen hundred
pounds ?"

"I'll stand the racket," said Buck heartily.
"Mr. Wayne is a gentleman and has spoken up
for me. So I suppose the negotiations are at an
end."

Wayne bowed.

1 68

The Experiment of Mr. Buck

"They are indeed at an end. I am sorry I can-
not sell you the property."

"What?" cried Mr. Barker, starting to his
feet.

"Mr. Buck has spoken correctly," said the
King.

"I have, I have," cried Buck, springing up also;
"I said—"

"Mr. Buck has spoken correctly," said the
King; "the negotiations are at an end."

All the men at the table rose to their feet;
Wayne alone rose without excitement.

"Have I, then," he said, "your Majesty's per-
mission to depart? I have given my last
answer."

"You have it," said Auberon, smiling, but not
lifting his eyes from the table. And amid a dead
silence the Provost of Netting Hill passed out of
the room.

"Well ?" said Wilson, turning round to Barker,
"Well?"

Barker shook his head desperately.

"The man ought to be in an asylum," he
said. "But one thing is clear, we need not
bother further about him. The man can be
treated as mad."

"Of course," said Buck, turning to him with
sombre decisiveness. "You're perfectly right,

169

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

Barker. He is a good enough fellow, but he
can be treated as mad. Let's put it in simple
form. Go and tell any twelve men in any
town, go and tell any doctor in any town,
that there is a man offered fifteen hundred
pounds for a thing he could sell commonly
for four hundred, and that when asked for a
reason for not accepting it he pleads the inviolate
sanctity of Notting Hill and calls it the Holy
Mountain. What would they say? What more
can we have on our side than the common-
sense of everybody? On what else do all laws
rest? I'll tell you, Barker, what's better than
any further discussion. Let's send in workmen
on the spot to pull down Pump Street. And if
old Wayne says a word, arrest him as a lunatic.
That's all."

Barker's eyes kindled.

"I always regarded you, Buck, if you don't
mind my saying so, as a very strong man. I'll
follow you."

"So, of course, will I," said Wilson.

Buck rose again impulsively.

"Your Majesty," he said, glowing with popu-
larity, "I beseech your Majesty to consider
favourably the proposal to which we have com-
mitted ourselves. Your Majesty's leniency,
our own offers, have fallen in vain on that

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The Experiment of Mr. Buck

extraordinary man. He may be right. He
may be God. He may be the devil. But we
think it, for practical purposes, more prob-
able that he is off his head. Unless that
assumption were acted on, all human affairs
would go to pieces. We act on it, and we
propose to start operations in Notting Hill at
once."

The King leaned back in his chair.

"The Charter of the Cities ..." he said witH
a rich intonation.

But Buck, being finally serious, was also
cautious, and did not again make the mistake of
disrespect.

"Your Majesty," he said, bowing, "I am
not here to say a word against anything your
Majesty has said or done. You are a far better
educated man than I, and no doubt there were
reasons, upon intellectual grounds, for those
proceedings. But may I ask you and appeal to
your common good-nature for a sincere answer?
When you drew up the Charter of the Cities
did you contemplate the rise of a man like
Adam Wayne? Did you expect that the
Charter — whether it was an experiment, or a
scheme of decoration, or a joke — could ever
really come to this — to stopping a vast scheme
of ordinary business, to shutting up a road, to

171

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

spoiling the chances of cabs, omnibuses, railway
stations, to disorganising half a city, to risking a
kind of civil war ? .Whatever were your objects,
were they that ?"

Barker and Wilson looked at him admiringly;
the King more admiringly still.

"Provost Buck," said Auberon, "you speak in
public uncommonly well. I give you your point
with the magnanimity of an artist. My scheme
did not include the appearance of Mr. Wayne.
Alas ! would that my poetic power had been great
enough."

"I thank your Majesty," said Buck, courte-
ously but quickly. "Your Majesty's statements
are always clear and studied: therefore I may
draw a deduction. As the scheme, whatever it
was, on which you set your heart did not
include the appearance of Mr. Wayne, it will
survive his removal. Why not let us clear
away this particular Pump Street, which does
interfere with our plans, and which does not, by
your Majesty's own statement, interfere with
yours."

"Caught out!" said the King, enthusiastically
and quite impersonally, as if he were watching a
cricket match.

"This man Wayne," continued Buck, "would
be shut up by any doctors in England. But we

172

The Experiment of Mr. Buck

only ask to have it put before them. Mean-
while no one's interests, not even in all proba-
bility his own, can be really damaged by going
on with the improvements in Notting Hill. Not
our interests, of course, for it has been the
hard and quiet work of ten years. Not the
interests of Notting Hill, for nearly all its
educated inhabitants desire the change. Not
the interests of your Majesty, for you say, with
characteristic sense, that you never contemplated
the rise of the lunatic at all. Not, as I say, his
own interests, for the man has a kind heart and
many talents, and a couple of good doctors would
probably put him righter than all the free cities
and sacred mountains in creation. I therefore
assume, if I may use so bold a word, that your
Majesty will not offer any obstacle to our pro-
ceeding with the improvements."

And Mr. Buck sat down amid subdued but
excited applause among the allies.

"Mr. Buck," said the King, "I beg your pardon,
for a number of beautiful and sacred thoughts,
in which you were generally classified as a
fool. But there is another thing to be consid-
ered. Suppose you send in your workmen,
and Mr. Wayne does a thing regrettable indeed,
but of which I am sorry to say, I think him quite
capable — knocks their teeth out."

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The Napoleon of Notting Hill

"I have thought of that, your Majesty," said
Mr. Buck, easily, "and I think it can simply
be guarded against. Let us send in a strong
guard of say a hundred men — a hundred of
the North Kensington Halberdiers" (he smiled
grimly), "of whom your Majesty is so fond.
Or say — a hundred and fifty. The whole
population of Pump Street, I fancy, is only about
a hundred."

"Still they might stand together and lick you,"
said the King, dubiously.

"Then say two hundred," said Buck, gaily.

"It might happen," said the King, restlessly,
"that one Notting Hiller fought better than two
North Kensingtons."

"It might," said Buck, coolly; "then say two
hundred and fifty."

The King bit his lip.

"And if they are beaten, too," he said
viciously.

"Your Majesty," said Buck, and leaned back
easily in his chair. "Suppose they are. If any-
thing be clear, it is clear that all fighting
matters are mere matters of arithmetic. Here
we have a hundred and fifty say of Notting Hill
soldiers. Or say two hundred. If one of
them can fight two of us — we can send in, not
four hundred, but six hundred, and smash

174

The Experiment of Mr. Buck

him. That is all. It is out of all immediate
probability that one of them could fight four of
us. So what I say is this. Run no risks.
Finish it at once. Send in eight hundred men
and smash him — smash him almost without
seeing him. And go on with the improve-
ments."

And Mr. Buck pulled out a bandanna and blew
his nose.

"Do you know, Mr. Buck," said the King,
staring gloomily at the table, "the admirable
clearness of your reason produces in my mind
a sentiment which I trust I shall not offend
you by describing as an aspiration to punch
your head. You irritate me sublimely. What
can it be in me? Is it the relic of a moral
sense ?"

"But your Majesty," said Barker, eagerly and
suavely, "does not refuse our proposals ?"

"My dear Barker, your proposals are as dam-
nable as your manners. I want to have nothing
to do with them. Suppose I stopped them
altogether. What would happen ?"

Barker answered in a very low voice —

"Revolution."

The King glanced quickly at the men around
the table. They were all looking down silently:
their brows were red.

175

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

He rose with a startling suddenness, and an
unusual pallor.

"Gentlemen," he said, "you have overruled me.
Therefore I can speak plainly. I think Adam
Wayne, who is as mad as a hatter, worth
more than a million of you. But you have the
force, and, I admit, the common sense, and he is
lost. Take your eight hundred halberdiers and
smash him. It would be more sportsmanlike to
take two hundred."

"More sportsmanlike," said Buck, grimly, "but
a great deal less humane. We are not artists, and
streets purple with gore do not catch our eye in
the right way."

"It is pitiful," said Auberon. "With five or
six times their number there will be no fight at
all."

"I hope not," said Buck, rising and adjusting
his gloves. "We desire no fight, your Majesty.
We are peaceable business men."

"Well," said the King, wearily, "the conference
is at an end at last."

And he went out of the room before any one
else could stir.

Forty workmen, a hundred Bayswater Halber-
diers, two hundred from South, and three from
North Kensington, assembled at the foot of Hol-

176

The Experiment of Mr. Buck

land Walk and marched up it, under the general
direction of Barker, who looked flushed and
happy in full dress. At the end of the procession
a small and sulky figure lingered like an urchin.
It was the King.

"Barker," he said at length, appealingly, "you
are an old friend of mine — you understand
my hobbies as I understand yours. Why can't
you let it alone? I hoped that such fun
might come out of this Wayne business. Why
can't you let it alone? It doesn't really so much
matter to you — what's a road or so? For me
it's the one joke that may save me from
pessimism. Take fewer men and give me an
hour's fun. Really and truly, James, if you
collected coins or humming-birds, and I could
buy one with the price of your road, I would
buy it. I collect incidents — those rare, those
precious things. Let me have one. Pay a few
pounds for it. Give these Notting Killers a
chance. Let them alone."

"Auberon," said Barker, kindly, forgetting all
royal titles in a rare moment of sincerity,
"I do feel what you mean. I have had mo-
ments when these hobbies have hit me. I have
had moments when I have sympathised with
your humours. I have had moments, though
you may not easily believe it, when I have

177

The Napoleon of dotting Hill

sympathised with the madness of Adam Wayne.
But the world, Auberon, the real world, is
not run on these hobbies. It goes on great
brutal wheels of facts — wheels on which you
are the butterfly. And Wayne is the fly on
the wheel."

Auberon's eyes looked frankly at the other's.

"Thank you, James; what you say is true.
It is only a parenthetical consolation to me to
compare the intelligence of flies somewhat favour-
ably with the intelligence of wheels. But it is the
nature of flies to die soon, and the nature of
wheels to go on for ever. Go on with the wheel.
Good-bye, old man."

And James Barker went on, laughing, with a
high colour, slapping his bamboo on his leg.

The King watched the tail of the retreating
regiment with a look of genuine depression, which
made him seem more like a baby than ever.
Then he swung round and struck his hands
together.

"In a world without humour," he said,
"the only thing to do is to eat. And how
perfect an exception! How can these people
strike dignified attitudes, and pretend that
things matter, when the total ludicrousness of
life is proved by the very method by which it
is supported? A man strikes the lyre, and

178

The Experiment of Mr. Buck

says, 'Life is real, life is earnest,' and then
goes into a room and stuffs alien substances into
a hole in his head. I think Nature was indeed
a little broad in her humour in these matters.
But we all fall back on the pantomime, as
I have in this municipal affair. Nature has
her farces, like the act of eating or the shape
of the kangaroo, for the more brutal appe-
tite. She keeps her stars and mountains for
those who can appreciate something more
subtly ridiculous." He turned to his equerry.
"But, as I said 'eating,' let us have a picnic like
two nice little children. Just run and bring
me a table and a dozen courses or so, and
plenty of champagne, and under these swinging
boughs, Bowler, we will return to Nature."

It took about an hour to erect in Holland Lane
the monarch's simple repast, during which
time he walked up and down and whistled, but
still with an unaffected air of gloom. He had
really been done out of a pleasure he had
promised himself, and had that empty and
sickened feeling which a child has when dis-
appointed of a pantomime. When he and the
equerry had sat down, however, and consumed a
fair amount of dry champagne, his spirits began
mildly to revive.

"Things take too long in this world," he said.
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The Napoleon of Notting Hill

"I detest all this Barker ian business about
evolution and the gradual modification of things.
I wish the world had been made in six days,
and knocked to pieces again in six more.
And I wish I had done it. The joke's good
enough in a broad way, sun and moon and the
image of God, and all that, but they keep it up
so damnably long. Did you ever long for a
miracle, Bowler?"

"No, sir," said Bowler, who was an evolution-
ist, and had been carefully brought up.

"Then I have," answered the King. "I have
walked along a street with the best cigar in the
cosmos in my mouth, and more Burgundy
inside me than you ever saw in your life,
and longed that the lamp-post would turn into
an elephant to save me from the hell of blank
existence. Take my word for it, my evolu-
tionary Bowler, don't you believe people when
they tell you that people sought for a sign, and
believed in miracles because they were ignorant.
They did it because they were wise, filthily, vilely
wise — too wise to eat or sleep or put on their
boots with patience. This seems delightfully like
a new theory of the origin of Christianity, which
would itself be a thing of no mean absurdity. Take
some more wine."

The wind blew round them as they sat at their
180

The Experiment of Mr. Buck

little table, with its white cloth and bright
wine-cups, and flung the tree-tops of Holland
Park against each other, but the sun was in that
strong temper which turns green into gold. The
King pushed away his plate, lit a cigar slowly,
and went on —

"Yesterday I thought that something next
door to a really entertaining miracle might
happen to me before I went to amuse the
worms. To see that red-haired maniac waving
a great sword, and making speeches to his
incomparable followers, would have been a
glimpse of that Land of Youth from which
the Fates shut us out. I had planned some
quite delightful things. A Congress of Knights-
bridge with a treaty, and myself in the chair,
and perhaps a Roman triumph, with jolly old
Barker led in chains. And now these wretched
prigs have gone and stamped out the exquisite
Mr. Wayne altogether, and I suppose they will
put him in a private asylum somewhere in their
damned humane way. Think of the treasures
daily poured out to his unappreciative keeper!
I wonder whether they would let me be his
keeper. But life is a vale. Never forget at
any moment of your existence to regard it in the
light of a vale. This graceful habit, if not
acquired in youth — "

181

The Napoleon of Nolting Hill

The King stopped, with his cigar lifted, for
there had slid into his eyes the startled look of
a man listening. He did not move for a few
moments; then he turned his head sharply
towards the high, thin, and lath-like paling which
fenced certain long gardens and similar spaces
from the lane. From behind it there was
coming a curious scrambling and scraping
noise, as of a desperate thing imprisoned in this
box of thin wood. The King threw away his
cigar, and jumped on to the table. From this
position he saw a pair of hands hanging with a
hungry clutch on the top of the fence. Then
the hands quivered with a convulsive effort, and
a head shot up between them — the head of one
of the Bayswater Town Council, his eyes and
whiskers wild with fear. He swung himself
over, and fell on the other side on his face, and
groaned openly and without ceasing. The next
moment the thin, taut wood of the fence was
struck as by a bullet, so that it reverberated
like a drum, and over it came tearing and
cursing, with torn clothes and broken nails and
bleeding faces, twenty men at one rush. The
King sprang five feet clear off the table on to
the ground. The moment after the table was
flung over, sending bottles and glasses flying,
and the debris was literally swept along the

182

The Experiment of Mr. Buck

ground by that stream of men pouring past, and
Bowler was borne along with them, as the
King said in his famous newspaper article,
"like a captured bride." The great fence
swung and split under the load of climbers that
still scaled and cleared it. Tremendous gaps
were torn in it by this living artillery; and
through them the King could see more and
more frantic faces, as in a dream, and more and
more men running. They were as miscel-
laneous as if some one had taken the lid off
a human dustbin. Some were untouched, some
were slashed and battered and bloody, some
were splendidly dressed, some tattered and
half-naked, some were in the fantastic garb of
the burlesque cities, some in the dullest mod-
ern dress. The King stared at all of them, but
none of them looked at the King. Suddenly he
stepped forward.

"Barker," he said, "what is all this?"
"Beaten," said the politician — "beaten all to
hell!" And he plunged past with nostrils
shaking like a horse's, and more and more men
plunged after him.

Almost as he spoke, the last standing strip of
fence bowed and snapped, flinging, as from
a catapult, a new figure upon the road. 'He wore
the flaming red of the halberdiers of Notting

183

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

Hill, and on his weapon there was blood,
and in his face victory. In another moment
masses of red glowed through the gaps of
the fence, and the pursuers, with their halberds,
came pouring down the lane. Pursued and pur-
suers alike swept by the little figure with the
owlish eyes, who had not taken his hands out of
his pockets.

The King had still little beyond the confused
sense of a man caught in a torrent — the feeling
of men eddying by. Then something happened
which he was never able afterwards to describe,
and which we cannot describe for him. Suddenly
in the dark entrance, between the broken gates
of a garden, there appeared framed a flaming
figure.

Adam Wayne, the conqueror, with his face
flung back, and his mane like a lion's, stood
with his great sword point upwards, the red
raiment of his office flapping round him like
the red wings of an archangel. And the King
saw, he knew not how, something new and over-
whelming. The great green trees and the
great red robes swung together in the wind.
The sword seemed made for the sunlight. The
preposterous masquerade, born of his own
mockery, towered over him and embraced the
world. This was the normal, this was sanity,

184

The Experiment of Mr. Buck

this was nature; and he himself, with his
rationality and his detachment and his black frock
coat, he was the exception and the accident —
a blot of black upon a world of crimson and
gold.

185

BOOK IV

CHAPTER I — The Battle of the Lamps

MR. BUCK, who, though retired, fre-
quently went down to his big
drapery stores in Kensington High
Street, was locking up those premises, being
the last to leave. It was a wonderful evening
of green and gold, but that did not trouble
him very much. If you had pointed it out,
he would have agreed seriously, for the rich
always desire to be artistic.

He stepped out into the cool air, buttoning up
his light coat, and blowing great clouds from
his cigar, when a figure dashed up to him in an-
other yellow overcoat, but unbuttoned and flying
behind him.

"Hullo, Barker!" said the draper. "Any of
our summer articles? You're too late. Fac-
tory Acts, Barker. Humanity and progress,
my boy."

"Oh, don't chatter," cried Barker, stamping.
"We've been beaten."

"Beaten — by what ?" asked Buck, mystified.

"By Wayne."

Buck looked at Barker's fierce white face for
the first time, as it gleamed in the lamplight.

"Come and have a drink," he said.

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

They adjourned to a cushioned and glaring
buffet, and Buck established himself slowly and
lazily in a seat, and pulled out his cigar-case.

"Have a smoke," he said.

Barker was still standing, and on the fret, but
after a moment's hesitation, he sat down, as if he
might spring up again the next minute. They
ordered drinks in silence.

"How did it happen ?" asked Buck, turning his
big bold eyes on him.

"How the devil do I know?" cried Barker.
"It happened like — like a dream. How can
two hundred men beat six hundred? How can
they?"

"Well," said Buck, coolly. "How did they?
You ought to know."

"I don't know. I can't describe," said the
other, drumming on the table. "It seemed
like this. We were six hundred and marched
with those damned poleaxes of Auberon's —
the only weapons we've got. We marched two
abreast. We went up to Holland Walk, between
the high palings which seemed to me to go
straight as an arrow for Pump Street. I was
near the tail of the line and it was a long one.
When the end of it was still between the high
palings, the head of the line was already crossing
Holland Park Avenue. Then the head plunged

190

The Battle of the Lamps

into the network of narrow streets on the
other side, and the tail and myself came out on
the great crossing. When we also had reached
the northern side and turned up a small street
that points, crookedly as it were, towards
Pump Street, the whole thing felt different. The
streets dodged and bent so much that the head
of our line seemed lost altogether: it might as
well have been in North America. And all this
time we hadn't seen a soul."

Buck, who was idly dabbing the ash of his
cigar on the ash-tray, began to move it deliber-
ately over the table, making feathery grey lines,
a kind of map.

"But though the little streets were all de-
serted (which got a trifle on my nerves), as
we got deeper and deeper into them, a thing
began to happen that I couldn't understand.
Sometimes a long way ahead — three turns or
corners ahead, as it were — there broke suddenly
a sort of noise, clattering, and confused cries,
and then stopped. Then, when it happened,
something, I can't describe it — a kind of shake
or stagger went down the line, as if the line
were a live thing, whose head had been struck,
or had been an electric cord. None of us knew
why we were moving, but we moved and
jostled. Then we recovered, and went on

191

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

through the little dirty streets, round corners,
and up twisted ways. The little crooked streets
began to give me a feeling I can't explain — as if
it were a dream. I felt as if things had lost their
reason, and we should never get out of the
maze. Odd to hear me talk like that, isn't it ? The
streets were quite well-known streets, all down
on the map. But the fact remains. I wasn't afraid
of something happening. I was afraid of nothing
ever happening — nothing ever happening for all
God's eternity."

He drained his glass and called for more
whisky. He drank it and went on.

"And then something did happen. Buck, it's
the solemn truth, that nothing has ever happened
to you in your life. Nothing had ever happened
to me in my life."

"Nothing ever happened!" said Buck, staring.
"What do you mean?"

"Nothing has ever happened," repeated Barker,
with a morbid obstinacy. "You don't know
what a thing happening means? You sit in
your office expecting customers, and customers
come; you walk in the street expecting friends,
and friends meet you; you want a drink and
get it; you feel inclined for a bet and make
it. You expect either to win or lose, and
you do either one or the other. But

192

The Battle of the Lamps

things happening!" and he shuddered ungov-
ernably.

"Go on," said Buck, shortly. "Get on."

"As we walked wearily round the corners,
something happened. When something hap-
pens, it happens first, and you see it afterwards.
It happens of itself, and you have nothing to do
with it. It proves a dreadful thing — that there
are other things besides one's self. I can only
put it in this way. We went round one turn-
ing, two turnings, three turnings, four turnings,
five. • Then I lifted myself slowly up from the
gutter where I had been shot half senseless,
and was beaten down again by living men
crashing on top of me, and the world was full
of roaring, and big men rolling about like nine-
pins."

Buck looked at his map with knitted brows.

"Was that Portobello Road?" he asked.

"Yes," said Barker. "Yes ; Portobello Road—
I saw it afterwards; but, my God — what a
place it was! Buck, have you ever stood and
let a six foot of a man lash and lash at
your head with six feet of pole with six
pounds of steel at the end? Because, when
you have had that experience, as Walt
Whitman says, 'you re-examine philosophies and
religions.' '

J93

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

"I have no doubt," said Buck. "If that
was Portobello Road, don't you see what
happened ?"

"I know what happened exceedingly well. I
was knocked down four times; an experience
which, as I say, has an effect on the mental
attitude. And another thing happened, too. I
knocked down two men. After the fourth
fall (there was not much bloodshed — more
brutal rushing and throwing — for nobody could
use their weapons), after the fourth fall, I say,
I got up like a devil, and I tore a poleaxe out
of a man's hand and struck where I saw the
scarlet of Wayne's fellows, struck again and
again. Two of them went over, bleeding on
the stones, thank God — and I laughed and
found myself sprawling in the gutter again, and
got up again, and struck again, and broke my
halberd to pieces. I hurt a man's head,
though."

Buck set down his glass with a bang, and spat
out curses through his thick moustache.

"What is the matter?" asked Barker, stopping,
for the man had been calm up to now, and
now his agitation was far more violent than
ftiis own.

"The matter?" said Buck, bitterly; "don't you
see how these maniacs have got us? Why

194

The Battle of the Lamps

should two idiots, one a clown and the other a
screaming lunatic, make sane men so different
from themselves? Look here, Barker; I will give
you a picture. A very well-bred young man
of this century is dancing about in a frock-coat.
He has in his hands a nonsensical seventeenth
century halberd, with which he is trying to
kill men in a street in Netting Hill. Damn
it! don't you see how they've got us? Never
mind how you felt — that is how you looked.
The King would put his cursed head on one
side and call it exquisite. The Provost of
Notting Hill would put his cursed nose in
the air and call it heroic. But m Heaven's
name what would you have called it — two days
before?"

Barker bit his lip.

"You haven't been through it, Buck," he
said. "You don't understand fighting — the
atmosphere."

"I don't deny the atmosphere," said Buck,
striking the table. "I only say it's their atmos-
phere. It's Adam Wayne's atmosphere. It's the
atmosphere which you and I thought had vanished
from an educated world for ever."

"Well, it hasn't," said Barker; "and if you have
any lingering doubts, lend me a poleaxe and I'll
show you."

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

There was a long silence, and then Buck
turned to his neighbour and spoke in that good-
tempered tone that comes of a power of looking
facts in the face; the tone in which he concluded
great bargains.

"Barker," he said, "you are right. This
old thing — this fighting, has come back. It has
come back suddenly and taken us by surprise.
So it is first blood to Adam Wayne. But,
unless reason and arithmetic and everything
else have gone crazy, it must be next and
last blood to us. But when an issue has really
arisen, there is only one thing to do — to
study that issue as such and win in it. Barker,
since it is fighting, we must understand fight-
ing. I must understand fighting as coolly and
completely as I understand drapery; you must
understand fighting as coolly and completely
as you understand politics. Now, look at
the facts. I stick without hesitation to my
original formula. Fighting, when we have the
stronger force, is only a matter of arithmetic.
It must be. You asked me just now how two
hundred men could defeat six hundred. I can
tell you. Two hundred men can defeat six
hundred when the six hundred behave like
fools. When they forget the very conditions
they are fighting in; when they fight in a

196

The Battle of the Lamps

swamp as if it were a mountain; when they
fight in a forest as if it were a plain ; when they
fight in streets without remembering the object of
streets."

"What is the object of streets?" asked
Barker.

"What is the object of supper?" cried
Buck, furiously. "Isn't it obvious? This
military science is mere common sense. The
object of a street is to lead from one place
to another; therefore all streets join; therefore
street fighting is quite a peculiar thing. You
advanced into that hive of streets as if you were
advancing into an open plain where you could
see everything. Instead of that you were
advancing into the bowels of a fortress, with
streets pointing at you, streets turning on you,
streets jumping Out at you, and all in the
hands of the enemy. Do you know what
Portobello Road is? It is the only point on
your journey where two side streets run up
opposite each other. Wayne massed his men on
the two sides, and when he had let enough
of your line go past, cut it in two like a
worm. Don't you see what would have saved
you?"

Barker shook his head.

"Can't your 'atmosphere' help you?" asked
197

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

Buck, bitterly. "Must I attempt explanations
in the romantic manner? Suppose that, as you
were fighting blindly with the red Notting
Killers who imprisoned you on both sides,"
you had heard a shout from behind them.
Suppose, oh, romantic Barker! that behind
the red tunics you had seen the blue and gold
of South Kensington taking them in the rear,
surrounding them in their turn and hurling them
on to your halberds."

"If the thing had been possible," began Barker,
cursing.

"The thing would have been as possible," said
Buck, simply; "as simple as arithmetic. There
are a certain number of street entries that lead
to Pump Street. There are not nine hundred;
there are not nine million. They do not grow
in the night. They do not increase like mush-
rooms. It must be possible with such an over-
whelming force as we have to advance by all of
them at once. In every one of the arteries, or
approaches, we can put almost as many men as
Wayne can put into the field altogether. Once do
that and we have him to demonstration. It is
like a proposition in Euclid."

"You think that is certain," said Barker,
anxious but dominated delightfully.

"I'll tell you what I think," said Buck, getting
198

up jovially. "I think Adam Wayne made an
uncommonly spirited little fight. And I think I
am confoundedly sorry for him."

"Buck, you are a great man," cried Barker,
rising also. "You've knocked me sensible
again. I am ashamed to say it, but I was
getting romantic. Of course, what you say
is adamantine sense. Fighting, being physical,
must be mathematical. We were beaten because
we were neither mathematical nor physical nor
anything else — because we deserved to be beaten.
Hold all the approaches, and with our force we
must have him. When shall we open the next
campaign ?"

"Now," said Buck, and walked out of the
bar.

"Now!" cried Barker, following him eagerly.
"Do you mean now ? It is so late."

Buck turned on him, stamping.

"Do you think fighting is under the Factory
Acts ?" he said. And he called a cab. "Netting
Hill Gate Station," he said, and the two drove
off.

A genuine reputation can sometimes be made
in an hour. Buck, in the next sixty or eighty
minutes showed himself a really great man of
action. His cab carried him like a thunder-

199

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

bolt from the King to Wilson, from Wilson
to Swindon, from Swindon to Barker again;
if his course was jagged, it had the jagged-
ness of the lightning. Only two things he
carried with him, his inevitable cigar and the
map of North Kensington and Notting Hill.
There were, as he again and again pointed out,
with every variety of persuasion and violence,
only nine possible ways of approaching Pump
Street within a quarter of a mile around it;
three out of Westbourne Grove, two out of
Ladbroke Grove, and four out of Notting Hill
High Street. And he had detachments of
two hundred each, stationed at every one of the
entrances before the last green of that strange
sunset had sunk out of the black sky.

The sky was particularly black, and on this
alone was one false protest raised against the
triumphant optimism of the Provost of North
Kensington. He overruled it with his infectious
common sense.

"There is no such thing," he said, "as night
in London. You have only to follow the line of
street lamps. Look, here is the map. Two
hundred purple North Kensington soldiers
under myself march up Ossington Street,
two hundred more under Captain Bruce,
of the North Kensington Guard, up Clanricarde

200

The Battle of the Lamps

Gardens.* Two hundred yellow West Kensing-
tons under Provost Swindon attack from Pern-
bridge Road. Two hundred more of my men from
the eastern streets, leading away from Queen's
Road. Two detachments of yellows enter
by two roads from Westbourne Grove.
Lastly, two hundred green Bayswaters come
down from the North through Chepstow Place,
and two hundred more under Provost Wilson
himself, through the upper part of Pembridge
Road. Gentlemen, it is mate in two moves. The
enemy must either mass in Pump Street and
be cut to pieces — or they must retreat past
the Gaslight & Coke Co. — and rush on my four
hundred — or they must retreat past St. Luke's
Church and rush on the six hundred from
the West. Unless we are all mad, it's
plain. Come on. To your quarters and await
Captain Bruce' s signal to advance. Then you
have only to walk up a line of gas-lamps and
smash this nonsense by pure mathematics. To-
morrow we shall be all civilians again."

His optimism glowed like a great fire in the
night, and ran round the terrible ring in which
Wayne was now held helpless. The fight was

* ClanJicarde Gardens at this time was no longer a cul-de-
sac, but was connected by Pump Street to Pembridge Square.
See map.

201

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

already over. One man's energy for one hour had
saved the city from war.

For the next ten minutes Buck walked up and
down silently beside the motionless clump of
his two hundred. He had not changed his
appearance in any way, except to sling across
his yellow overcoat a case with a revolver in it.
So that his light-clad modern figure showed up
oddly beside the pompous purple uniforms of his
halberdiers, which darkly but richly coloured the
black night.

At length a shrill trumpet rang from some way
up the street; it was the signal of advance.
Buck briefly gave the word, and the whole
purple line, with its dimly shining steel, moved
up the side alley. Before it was a slope of
street, long, straight, and shining in the dark.
It was a sword pointed at Pump Street, the heart
at which nine other swords were pointed that
night.

A quarter of an hour's silent marching
brought them almost within earshot of any
tumult in the doomed citadel. But still there
was no sound and no sign of the enemy. This
time, at any rate, they knew that they were closing
in on it mechanically, and they marched on
under the lamplight and the dark without any
of that eerie sense of ignorance which Barker

202

had felt when entering the hostile country by one
avenue alone.

"Halt — point arms!" cried Buck, suddenly,
and as he spoke there came a clatter of feet
tumbling along the stones. But the halberds
were levelled in vain. The figure that rushed
up was a messenger from the contingent of the
North.

"Victory, Mr. Buck !" he cried, panting, "they
are ousted. Provost Wilson of Bayswater has
taken Pump Street."

Buck ran forward in his excitement.

"Then, which way are they retreating? It
must be either by St. Luke's to meet Swindon, or
by the Gas Company to meet us. Run like mad
to Swindon and see that the yellows are hold-
ing the St. Luke's Road. We will hold
this, never fear. We have them in an iron trap.
Run!"

As the messenger dashed away into the dark-
ness, the great guard of North Kensington
swung on with the certainty of a machine.
Yet scarcely a hundred yards further their
halberd points again fell in line gleaming in the
gas-light. For again a clatter of feet was heard
on the stones, and again it proved to be only the
messenger.

"Mr. Provost," he said, "the yellow West Ken-
203

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

singtons have been holding the road by St.
Luke's for twenty minutes since the capture of
Pump Street. Pump Street is not two hundred
yards away, they cannot be retreating down that
road."

"Then they are retreating down this!" said
Provost Buck, with a final cheerfulness, "and by
good fortune down a well-lighted road, though it
twists about. Forward!"

As they moved along the last three hundred
yards of their journey, Buck fell, for the first time
in his life, perhaps, into a kind of philo-
sophical reverie, for men of his type are always
made kindly, and as it were melancholy, by suc-
cess.

"I am sorry for poor old Wayne, I really am,"
he thought. "He spoke up splendidly for me
at that Council. And he blacked old Barker's
eye with considerable spirit. But I don't
see what a man can expect when he fights
against arithmetic, to say nothing of civilisation.
And what a wonderful hoax all this military
genius is. I suspect I've just discovered what
Cromwell discovered, that a sensible tradesman
is the best general, and that a man who can
buy mep and sell men can lead and kill them.
The thing's simply like adding up a column in a
ledger. If Wayne has two hundred men, he

204

The Battle of the Lamps

can't put two hundred men in nine places at once.
If they're ousted from Pump Street they're
flying somewhere. If they're not flying past
the church they're flying past the Works. And
so we have them. We business men should
have no chance at all except that cleverer peo-
ple than we get bees in their bonnets that
prevent them from reasoning properly — so we
reason alone. And so I, who am comparatively
stupid, see things as God sees them, as a vast
machine. My God, what's this?" And he
clapped his hands to his eyes and staggered
back.

Then through the darkness he cried in a dread-
ful voice —

"Did I blaspheme God ? — I am struck blind."

"What ?" wailed another voice behind him, the
voice of a certain Wilfred Jarvis of North Ken-
sington.

"Blind!" cried Buck; "blind!"

"I'm blind, too !" cried Jarvis, in an agony.

"Fools, all of you," said a gross voice behind
them; "we're all blind. The lamps have gone
out."

"The lamps — but why? wKere?" cried Buck,
turning furiously in the darkness. "How are we
to get on? How are we to chase the enemy?
Where have they gone?"

205

The Napoleon of dotting Hill

"The enemy went — " said the rough voice
behind, and then stopped, doubtfully.

"Where?" shouted Buck, stamping like a mad-
man.

"They went," said the gruff voice, "past the
Gas Works, and they've used their chance."

"Great God !" thundered Buck, and snatched at
his revolver; "do you mean they've turned
out—"

But almost before he had spoken the words, he
was hurled like a stone from a catapult into the
midst of his own men.

"Notting Hill! Netting Hill!" cried frightful
voices out of the darkness, and they seemed
to come from all sides, for the men of North
Kensington, unacquainted with the road, had
lost all their bearings in the black world of blind-
ness.

"Notting Hill ! Notting Hill !" cried the invis-
ible people, and the invaders were hewn down
horribly with black steel, with steel that gave no
glint against any light.

Buck, though badly maimed with the blow of
a halberd, kept an angry but splendid sanity. He
groped madly for the wall and found it. Strug-
gling with crawling fingers along it, he found
a side opening and retreated into it with the

206

remnants of his men. Their adventures dur-
ing that prodigious night are not to be de-
scribed. They did not know whether they were
going towards or away from the enemy. Not
knowing where they themselves were, or where
their opponents were, it was mere irony to ask
where was the rest of their army. For a thing
had descended upon them which London does not
know — darkness, which was before the stars were
made, and they were as much lost in it as if they
had been made before the stars. Every now and
then, as those frightful hours wore on, they buf-
fetted in the darkness against living men, who
struck at them and at whom they struck, with
an idiot fury. When at last the grey dawn came,
they found they had wandered back to the edge
of the Uxbridge Road. They found that in those
horrible eyeless encounters, the North Kensing-
tons and the Bayswaters and the West Kensing-
tons had again and again met and butchered each
other, and they heard that Adam Wayne was bar-
ricaded in Pump Street.

207

CHAPTER II — The Correspondent of the
Court Journal

JOURNALISM had become like most other
such things in England, under the cautious
government and philosophy represented
by James Barker, somewhat sleepy and much
diminished in importance. This was partly due
to the disappearance of party government and
public speaking, partly to the compromise or
dead-lock which had made foreign wars im-
possible, but mostly, of course, to the temper
of the whole nation, which was that of a
people in a kind of back-water. Perhaps
the most well-known of the remaining news-
papers was the Court Journal, which was pub-
lished in a dusty but genteel-looking office just
out of Kensington High Street. For when
all the papers of a people have been for years
growing more and more dim and decorous
and optimistic, the dimmest and most de-
corous and most optimistic is very likely
to win. In the journalistic competition which
was still going on at the beginning of the
twentieth century, the final victor was the
Court Journal.

For some mysterious reason the King had
208

The Correspondent of the Court Journal

a great affection for hanging about in the Court
Journal office, smoking a morning cigarette and
looking over files. Like all ingrainedly idle men,
he was very fond of lounging and chatting in
places where other people were doing work. But
one would have thought that, even in the prosaic
England of his day, he might have found a more
bustling centre.

On this particular morning, however, he came
out of Kensington Palace with a more alert step
and a busier air than usual. He wore an extrava-
gantly long frock-coat, a pale-green waistcoat,
a very full and degage black tie, and curious
yellow gloves. This was his uniform as Colo-
nel of a regiment of his own creation, the ist
Decadents Green. It was a beautiful sight to
see him drilling them. He walked quickly
across the Park and the High Street, lighting his
cigarette as he went, and flung open the door of
the Court Journal office.

"You've heard the news, Pally — you've heard
the news ?" he said.

The Editor's name was Hoskins, but the King
called him Pally, which was an abbreviation of
Paladium of our Liberties.

"Well, your Majesty," said Hoskins, slowly
(he was a worried, gentlemanly looking person,
with a wandering brown beard) — "well, your

209

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

Majesty, I have heard rather curious things,
but I—"

"You'll hear more of them," said the King, dan-
cing a few steps of a kind of negro shuffle. "You'll
hear more of them, my blood-and-thunder tribune.
Do you know what I am going to do for
you?"

"No, your Majesty," replied the Paladium,
vaguely.

"I'm going to put your paper on strong,
dashing, enterprising lines," said the King.
"Now, where are your posters of last night's
defeat?"

"I did not propose, your Majesty," said the
Editor, "to have any posters exactly — "

"Paper, paper!" cried the King, wildly;
"bring me paper as big as a house. I'll do you
posters. Stop, I must take my coat off." He
began removing that garment with an air of
set intensity, flung it playfully at Mr. Hoskins'
head, entirely enveloping him, and looked at
himself in the glass. "The coat off," he
said, "and hat on. That looks like a sub-
editor. It is indeed the very essence of
sub-editing. Well," he continued, turning
round abruptly, "come along with that
paper."

The Paladium had only just extricated himself

210

The Correspondent of the Court Journal

reverently from the folds of the King's frock-
coat, and said bewildered —

"I am afraid, your Majesty — "

"Oh, you've got no enterprise," said Auberon.
"What's that roll in the corner? Wall-paper?
Decorations for your private residence? Art in
the home, Pally? Fling it over here, and I'll
paint such posters on the back of it that when
you put it up in your drawing-room you'll paste
the original pattern against the wall." And
the King unrolled the wall-paper, spreading
it over the whole floor. "Now give me the scis-
sors," he cried, and took them himself before the
other could stir.

He slit the paper into about five pieces, each
nearly as big as a door. Then he took a big blue
pencil and went down on his knees on the dusty
oil-cloth, and began to write on them, in huge
letters —

"FROM THE FRONT.

GENERAL BUCK DEFEATED.

DARKNESS, DANGER, AND DEATH.

WAYNE SAID TO BE IN PUMP STREET.

FEELING IN THE CITY."

He contemplated it for some time, wkh his Head
on one side, and got up, with a sigh.

211

The Napoleon of dotting Hill

"Not quite intense enough," he said — "not
alarming. I want the Court Journal to be feared
as well as loved. Let's try something more hard-
hitting." And he went down on his knees again.
After sucking the blue pencil for some time, he
began writing again busily. "How will this do ?"
he said —

"WAYNE'S WONDERFUL VICTORY."

"I suppose," he said, looking up appealingly,
and sucking the pencil — "I suppose we couldn't
say Victory' — 'Wayne's wonderful wictory'?
No, no. Refinement, Pally, refinement. I
have it."

"WAYNE WINS.

ASTOUNDING FIGHT IN THE DARK.

The gas-lamps in their courses, fought against
Buck."

"(Nothing like our fine old English transla-
tion. ) What else can we say ? Well, anything to
annoy old Buck ;" and he added, thoughtfully, in
smaller letters —

"Rumoured Court-martial on General Buck."

"Those will do for the present," he said, and
turned them both face downwards. "Paste,
please."

213

The Correspondent of the Court Journal

The Paladium, with an air of great terror,
brought the paste out of an inner room.

The King slabbed it on with the enjoyment of
a child messing with treacle. Then taking one
of his huge compositions fluttering in each
hand, he ran outside, and began pasting them
up in prominent positions over the front of the
office.

"And now," said Auberon, entering again
with undiminished vivacity — "now for the leading
article."

He picked up another of the large strips of
wall-paper, and, laying it across a desk, pulled
out a fountain-pen and began writing with
feverish intensity, reading clauses and fragments
aloud to himself, and rolling them on his tongue
like wine, to see if they had the pure journalistic
flavour.

"The news of the disaster to our forces in
Notting Hill, awful as it is, awful as it is — (no,
distressing as it is), may do some good if it draws
attention to the what's-his-name inefficiency
(scandalous inefficiency, of course) of the Gov-
ernment's preparations. In our present state
of information, it would be premature (what
a jolly word!) — it would be premature to cast
any reflections upon the conduct of General
Buck, whose services upon so many stricken

213

The Napoleon of dotting Hill

fields (ha, ha!), and whose honourable scars
and laurels, give him a right to have judgment
upon him at least suspended. But there is one
matter on which we must speak plainly. We
have been silent on it too long, from feelings,
perhaps of mistaken caution, perhaps of mis-
taken loyalty. This situation would never have
arisen but for what we can only call the inde-
fensible conduct of the King. It pains us to say
such things, but, speaking as we do in the
public interests (I plagiarise from Barker's
famous epigram), we shall not shrink because of
the distress we may cause to any individual,
even the most exalted. At this crucial moment
of our country, the voice of the People demands
with a single tongue, 'Where is the King?'
What is he doing while his subjects tear each
other in pieces in the streets of a great city?
Are his amusements and his dissipations (of
which we cannot pretend to be ignorant) so
engrossing that he can spare no thought for a
perishing nation ? It is with a deep sense of our
responsibility that we warn that exalted person
that neither his great position nor his incom-
parable talents will save him in the hour of
delirium from the fate of all those who, in the
madness of luxury or tyranny, have met the
English people in the rare day of its wrath."

214

"I am now," said the King, "going to write
an account of the battle by an eye-witness."
And he picked up a fourth sheet of wall-paper.
Almost at the same moment Buck strode
quickly into the office. He had a bandage round
his head.

"I was told," he said with his usual gruff civ-
ility, "that your Majesty was here."

"And of all things on earth," cried the King,
with delight, "here is an eye-witness! An eye-
witness who, I regret to observe, has at present
only one eye to witness with. Can you write
us the special article, Buck? Have you a rich
style?"

Buck, with a self-restraint which almost
approached politeness, took no notice whatever of
the King's maddening geniality.

"I took the liberty, your Majesty," he said
shortly, "of asking Mr. Barker to come here
also."

As he spoke, indeed, Barker came swinging
into the office, with his usual air of hurry.

"What is happening now?" asked Buck, turn-
ing to him with a kind of relief.

"Fighting still going on," said Barker.
"The four hundred from West Kensington
were hardly touched last night. They hardly
got near the place. Poor Wilson's Bayswater

215

The Napoleon of Netting Hill

men got cut about, though. They fought con-
foundedly well. They took Pump Street
once. What mad things do happen in the
world. To think that of all of us it should be
little Wilson with the red whiskers who came out
best."

The King made a note on his paper —

"Romantic Conduct of Mr. Wilson"

"Yes," said Buck, "it makes one a bit less proud
of one's 'hV "

The King suddenly folded or crumpled up the
paper, and put it in his pocket.

"I have an idea," he said. "I will be an eye-
witness. I will write you such letters from
the Front as will be more gorgeous than the
real thing. Give me my coat, Paladium. I
entered this room a mere King of England. I
leave it, Special War Correspondent of the Court
Journal It is useless to stop me, Pally ; it is vain
to cling to my knees, Buck ; it is hopeless, Barker,
to weep upon my neck. 'When duty calls' — the
remainder of the sentiment escapes me. You will
receive my first article this evening by the eight
o'clock post."

And, running out of the ofHce, he jumped
upon a blue Bayswater omnibus that went
swinging by.

216

"Well," said Barker, gloomily, "well."

"Barker," said Buck, "business may be lower
than politics, but war is, as I discovered last
night, a long sight more like business. You
politicians are such ingrained demagogues that
even when you have a despotism you think of
nothing but public opinion. So you learn to tack
and run, and are afraid of the first breeze. Now
we stick to a thing and get it. And our mistakes
help us. Look here ! at this moment we've beaten
Wayne."

"Beaten Wayne," repeated Barker.

"Why the dickens not?" cried the other,
flinging out his hands. "Look here. I said last
night that we had them by holding the
nine entrances. Well, I was wrong. We
should have had them but for a singular event
— the lamps went out. But for that it was
certain. Has it occurred to you, my bril-
liant Barker, that another singular event has hap-
pened since that singular event of the lamps going
out?"

"What event?" asked Barker.

"By an astounding coincidence, the sun has
risen," cried out Buck, with a savage air of
patience. "Why the hell aren't we holding all
those approaches now, and passing in on them

again? It should have been done at sunrise.

217

The Napoleon of Notting Sill

The confounded doctor wouldn't let me go out.
You were in command."

Barker smiled grimly.

"It is a gratification to me, my dear Buck,
to be able to say that we anticipated your
suggestions precisely. We went as early as
possible to reconnoitre the nine entrances.
Unfortunately, while we were fighting each
other in the dark, like a lot of drunken
navvies, Mr. Wayne's friends were working
very hard indeed. Three hundred yards from
Pump Street, at every one of those entrances,
there is a barricade nearly as high as the houses.
They were finishing the last, in Pembridge
Road, when we arrived. Our mistakes," he cried
bitterly, and flung his cigarette on the ground.
"It is not we who learn from them."

There was a silence for a few moments, and
Barker lay back wearily in a chair. The office
clock ticked exactly in the stillness.

At length Barker said suddenly —

"Buck, does it ever cross your mind what this
is all about? The Hammersmith to Maida
Vale thoroughfare was an uncommonly good
speculation. You and I hoped a great deal
from it. But is it worth it? It will cost us
thousands to crush this ridiculous riot. Suppose
we let it alone?"

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The Correspondent of the Court Journal

"And be thrashed in public by a red-haired
madman whom any two doctors would lock up?"
cried out Buck, starting to his feet. "What do
you propose to do, Mr. Barker? To apologise
to the admirable Mr. Wayne? To kneel to the
Charter of the Cities? To clasp to your
bosom the flag of the Red Lion? To kiss in
succession every sacred lamp-post that saved
Netting Hill? No, by God! My men fought
jolly well — they were beaten by a trick. And
they'll fight again."

"Buck," said Barker, "I always admired you.
And you were quite right in what you said the
other day."

"In what?"

"In saying," said Barker, rising quietly,
"that we had all got into Adam Wayne's
atmosphere and out of our own. My friend,
the whole territorial kingdom of Adam Wayne
extends to about nine streets, with barricades at
the end of them. But the spiritual kingdom of
Adam Wayne extends, God knows where —
it extends to this office at any rate. The red-
haired madman whom any two doctors would
lock up is filling this room with his roar-
ing, unreasonable soul. And it was the red-
haired madman who said the last word you
spoke."

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The Napoleon of dotting Hill

Buck walked to the window without replying.
"You understand, of course," he said at last,
"I do not dream of giving in."

The King, meanwhile, was rattling along on
the top of his blue omnibus. The traffic of
London as a whole had not, of course, been
greatly disturbed by these events, for the affair
was treated as a Notting Hill riot, and that
area was marked off as if it had been in the
hands of a gang of recognised rioters. The
blue omnibuses simply went round as they
would have done if a road were being
mended, and the omnibus on which the cor-
respondent of the Court Journal was sitting
swept round the corner of Queen's Road,
Bayswater.

The King was alone on the top of the vehicle,
and was enjoying the speed at which it was
going.

"Forward, my beauty, my Arab," he said,
patting the omnibus encouragingly, "fleetest of
all thy bounding tribe. Are thy relations with
thy driver, I wonder, those of the Bedouin and
his steed? Does he sleep side by side with
thee— "

His meditations were broken by a sudden
and jarring stoppage. Looking over the edge,

220

KING AUBERON DESCENDED FROM THE OMNIBUS WITH DIGNITY

The Correspondent of the Court Journal

he saw that the heads of the horses were being
held by men in the uniform of Wayne's army,
and heard the voice of an officer calling out
orders.

King Auberon descended from the omnibus
with dignity. The guard or picket of red hal-
berdiers who had stopped the vehicle did not
number more than twenty, and they were under
the command of a short, dark, clever-looking
young man, conspicuous among the rest as
being clad in an ordinary frock-coat, but girt
round the waist with a red sash and a long
seventeenth-century sword. A shiny silk hat
and spectacles completed the outfit in a pleasing
manner.

"To whom have I the honour of speaking?"
said the King, endeavouring to look like
Charles L, in spite of personal difficulties.

The dark man in spectacles lifted his hat with
equal gravity.

"My name is Bowles," he said. "I am a
chemist. I am also a captain of O company of
the army of Netting Hill. I am distressed at
having to incommode you by stopping the
omnibus, but this area is covered by our procla-
mation, and we intercept all traffic. May I
ask to whom I have the honour — Why, good
gracious, I beg your Majesty's pardon. I am

221

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

quite overwhelmed at finding myself concerned
with the King."

Auberon put up his hands with indescribable
grandeur.

"Not with the King," he said; "with the special
war correspondent of the Court Journal."

"I beg your Majesty's pardon," began Mr.
Bowles, doubtfully.

"Do you call me Majesty? I repeat," said
Auberon firmly, "I am a representative of
the press. I have chosen, with a deep sense
of responsibility, the name of Pinker. I
should desire a veil to be drawn over the
past."

"Very well, sir," said Mr. Bowles, with an
air of submission, "in our eyes the sanctity of
the press is at least as great as that of the
throne. We desire nothing better than that
our wrongs and our glories should be widely
known. May I ask, Mr. Pinker, if you have any
objection to being presented to the Provost and
to General Turnbull?"

"The Provost I have had the honour of
meeting," said Auberon, easily. "We old
journalists, you know, meet everybody. I
should be most delighted to have the same
honour again. General Turnbull, also, it would
be a gratification to know. The younger men

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The Correspondent of the Court Journal

are so interesting. We of the old Fleet Street
gang lose touch with them."

"Will you be so good as to step this way ?" said
the leader of O company.

"I am always good," said Mr. Pinker. "Lead
on."

223

CHAPTER III — The Great Army of South
Kensington

THE article from the special correspond-
ent of the Court Journal arrived in
due course, written on very coarse
copy-paper in the King's arabesque of hand-
writing, in which three words filled a page,
and yet were illegible. Moreover, the con-
tribution was the more perplexing at first
as it opened with a succession of erased para-
graphs. The writer appeared to have attempted
the article once or twice in several jour-
nalistic styles. At the side of one experiment
was written, "Try American style," and the
fragment began —

"The King must go. We want gritty men.
Flapdoodle is all very ... ;" and then broke
off, followed by the note, "Good sound journalism
safer. Try it."

The experiment in good sound journalism
appeared to begin —

"The greatest of English poets has said that a
rose by any . . ."

This also stopped abruptly. The next anno-
tation at the side was almost undecipherable, but
seemed to be something like —

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The Great Army of South Kensington

"How about old Steevens and the mot juste?
Kg. . ."

"Morning winked a little wearily at me over
the curt edge of Campden Hill and its houses
with their sharp shadows. Under the abrupt
black cardboard of the outline, it took some
little time to detect colours; but at length I saw
a brownish yellow shifting in the obscurity, and
I knew that it was the guard of Swindon's West
Kensington army. They are being held as a
reserve, and lining the whole ridge above the
Bayswater Road. Their camp and their main
force is under the great water works tower on
Campden Hill. I forgot to say that the water
works tower looked swart.

"As I passed them and came over the curve
of Silver Street, I saw the blue cloudy masses of
Barker's men blocking the entrance to the high-
road like a sapphire smoke (good). The dispo-
sition of the allied troops, under the general
management of Mr. Wilson, appears to be as
follows, — The Yellow Army (if I may so
describe the West Kensingtonians) lies, as I
have said, in a strip along the ridge; its furthest
point westward being the west side of Camp-
den Hill Road, its furthest point eastward
the beginning of Kensington Gardens. The
Green Army of Wilson lines the Notting Hill

225

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

High Road itself from Queen's Road to the cor-
ner of Pembridge Road, curving round the
latter, and extending some three hundred yards
up towards Westbourne Grove. Westbourne
Grove itself is occupied by Barker of South Ken-
sington. The fourth side of this rough square,
the Queen's Road side, is held by some of Buck's
Purple warriors.

"The whole resembles some ancient and dainty
Dutch flower-bed. Along the crest of Campden
Hill lie the golden crocuses of West Kensington.
They are, as it were, the first fiery fringe of
the whole. Northward lies our hyacinth
Barker, with all his blue hyacinths. Round to
the south-west run the green rushes of Wilson
of Bayswater, and a line of violet irises (aptly
symbolised by Mr. Buck) complete the whole.
The argent exterior ... (I am losing the style.
I should have said ' Curving with a whisk'
instead of merely 'Curving.' Also I should
have called the hyacinths 'sudden.' I cannot keep
this up. War is too rapid for this style of
writing. Please ask the office-boy to insert mots
justes.).

"The truth is that there is nothing to report.
That commonplace element which is always
ready to devour all beautiful things (as the
Black Pig in the Irish Mythology will finally

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The Great Army of South Kensington

devour the stars and gods) ; that commonplace
element, as I say, has in its Black Piggish way
devoured finally the chances of any romance in
this affair; that which once consisted of absurd
but thrilling combats in the streets, has degen-
erated into something which is the very prose of
warfare — it has degenerated into a siege. A
siege may be defined as a peace plus the
inconvenience of war. Of course Wayne can-
not hold out. There is no more chance of
help from anywhere else than of ships from the
moon. And if old Wayne had stocked his
street with tinned meats till all his garrison
had to sit on them, he couldn't hold out for more
than a month or two. As a matter of melan-
choly fact he has done something rather like
this. He has stocked his street with food
until there must be uncommonly little room to
turn round. But what is the good ? To hold out
for all that time and then to give in of neces-
sity, what does it mean? It means waiting until
your victories are forgotten and then taking the
trouble to be defeated. I cannot understand how
Wayne can be so inartistic.

"And how odd it is that one views a thing
quite differently when one knows it is defeated.
I always thought Wayne was rather fine. But

now, when I know that he is done for, there seems

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The Napoleon of Notting Hill

to be nothing else but Wayne. All the streets
seem to point at him, all the chimneys seem to
lean towards him. I suppose it is a mor-
bid feeling; but Pump Street seems to be the
only part of London that I feel physically. I
suppose, I say, that it is morbid. I suppose it is
exactly how a man feels about his heart when his
heart is weak. 'Pump Street' — the heart is a
pump. And I am drivelling.

"Our finest leader at the front is beyond all
question, General Wilson. He has adopted
alone among the other Provosts the uniform of
his own halberdiers, although that fine old six-
teenth-century garb was not originally intended to
go with red side-whiskers. It was he who, against
a most admirable and desperate defence, broke
last night into Pump Street and held it for at
least half an hour. He was afterwards expelled
from it by General Turnbull, of Notting Hill,
but only after desperate fighting and the sudden
descent of that terrible darkness which proved so
much more fatal to the forces of General Buck and
General Swindon.

"Provost Wayne himself, with whom I had,
with great good fortune, a most interesting
interview, bore the most eloquent testimony to
the conduct of General Wilson and his men. His
precise words are as follows: — 'I have bought

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The Great Army of South Kensington

sweets at his funny little shop when I was four
years old, and ever since. I never noticed
anything, I am ashamed to say, except that
he talked through his nose, and didn't wash
himself particularly. And he came over our bar-
ricade like a devil from hell.' I repeated this
speech to General Wilson himself, with some
delicate improvements, and he seemed pleased
with it. He does not, however, seem pleased
with anything so much just now as he is with
the wearing of a sword. I have it from the
front on the best authority that General
Wilson was not completely shaved yesterday. It
is believed in military circles that he is growing a
moustache. . . .

"As I have said, there is nothing to report.
I walk wearily to the pillar-box at the corner
of Pembridge Road to post my copy. Nothing
whatever has happened, except the preparations
for a particularly long and feeble siege, during
which I trust I shall not be required to be at
the Front. As I glance up Pembridge Road in
the growing dusk, the aspect of that road
reminds me that there is one note worth adding.
General Buck has suggested, with characteristic
acumen, to General Wilson, that in order to
obviate the possibility of such a catastrophe
as overwhelmed the allied forces in the last

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The Napoleon of Notting Hill

advance on Notting Hill (the catastrophe, I
mean, of the extinguished lamps), that each
soldier should have a lighted lantern round his
neck. This is one of the things which I really
admire about General Buck. He possesses
what people used to mean by 'the humility of
the man of science,' that is, he learns steadily
from his mistakes. Wayne may score off him in
some other way, but not in that way. The lan-
terns look like fairy lights as they curve round
the end of Pembridge Road.

"Later. — I write with some difficulty, because
the blood will run down my face and make pat-
terns on the paper. Blood is a very beautiful
thing; that is why it is concealed. If you
ask me why blood runs down my face, I can
only reply that I was kicked by a horse. If
you ask me what horse, I can reply with some
pride that it was a war-horse. If you ask me how
a war-horse came on the scene in our simple
pedestrian warfare, I am reduced to the necessity,
so painful to a special correspondent, of recount-
ing my experiences.

"I was, as I have said, in the very act of post-
ing my copy at the pillar-box, and of glancing
as I did so up the glittering curve of Pem-
bridge Road, studded with the lights of Wil-

230

The Great Army of South Kensington

son's men. I don't know what made me pause
to examine the matter, but I had a fancy
that the line of lights, where it melted into the
indistinct brown twilight, was more indistinct than
usual. I was almost certain that in a certain
stretch of the road where there had been five
lights there were now only four. I strained
my eyes; I counted them again, and there
were only three. A moment after there were
only two; an instant after only one; and an
instant after that the lanterns near to me
swung like jangled bells, as if struck suddenly.
They flared and fell; and for the moment the
fall of them was like the fall of the sun and stars
out of heaven. It left everything in a primal
blindness. As a matter of fact, the road was
not yet legitimately dark. There were still
red rays of a sunset in the sky, and the
brown gloaming was still warmed, as it were,
with a feeling as of firelight. But for three
seconds after the lanterns swung and sank, I
saw in front of me a blackness block-
ing the sky. And with the fourth second I
knew that this blackness which blocked the sky
was a man on a great horse; and I was
trampled and tossed aside as a swirl of horse-
men swept round the corner. As they turned
I saw that they were not black but scarlet;

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The Napoleon of Notting Hill

they were a sortie of the besieged, Wayne riding
ahead.

"I lifted myself from the gutter, blinded with
blood from a very slight skin-wound, and,
queerly enough, not caring either for the blind-
ness or for the slightness of the wound. For
one mortal minute after that amazing cavalcade
had spun past, there was dead stillness on the
empty road. And then came Barker and all his
halberdiers running like devils in the track of
them. It had been their business to guard the
gate by which the sortie had broken out ; but they
had not reckoned, and small blame to them, on
cavalry. As it was, Barker and his men made a
perfectly splendid run after them, almost catching
Wayne's horses by the tails.

"Nobody can understand the sortie. It con-
sists only of a small number of Wayne's
garrison. Turnbull himself, with the vast mass
of it, is undoubtedly still barricaded in Pump
Street. Sorties of this kind are natural enough
in the majority of historical sieges, such as
the siege of Paris in 1870, because in such
cases the besieged are certain of some support
outside. But what can be the object of it
in this case? Wayne knows (or if he is too
mad to know anything, at least Turnbull
knows) that there is not, and never has been,

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The Great Army of South Kensington

the smallest chance of support for him outside;
that the mass of the sane modern inhabitants of
London regard his farcical patriotism with as
much contempt as they do the original idiotcy
that gave it birth — the folly of our miserable
King. What Wayne and his horsemen are
doing nobody can even conjecture. The general
theory round here is that he is simply a traitor,
and has abandoned the besieged. But all such
larger but yet more soluble riddles are as
nothing compared to the one small but un-
answerable riddle: Where did they get the
horses ?

"Later. — I have heard a most extraordinary
account of the origin of the appearance of the
horses. It appears that that amazing person,
General Turnbull, who is now ruling Pump
Street in the absence of Wayne, sent out, on
the morning of the declaration of war, a vast
number of little boys (or cherubs of the gutter,
as we pressmen say), with half-crowns in their
pockets, to take cabs all over London. No less
than a hundred and sixty cabs met at Pump
Street; were commandeered by the garrison.
The men were set free, the cabs used to make
barricades, and the horses kept in Pump Street,
where they were fed and exercised for several

233

The Napoleon of dotting Hill

days, until they were sufficiently rapid and
efficient to be used for this wild ride out of
the town. If this is so, and I have it on the
best possible authority, the method of the sortie
is explained. But we have no explanation of
its object. Just as Barker's Blues were swing-
ing round the corner after them, they were
stopped, but not by an enemy; only by the
voice of one man, and he a friend. Red
Wilson of Bayswater ran alone along the main
road like a madman, waving them back with
a halberd snatched from a sentinel. He was
in supreme command, and Barker stopped at the
corner, staring and bewildered. We could hear
Wilson's voice loud and distinct out of the
dusk, so that it seemed strange that the great
voice should come out of the little body. 'Halt,
South Kensington! Guard this entry, and pre-
vent them returning. I will pursue. Forward,
the Green Guards!'

"A wall of dark blue uniforms and a wood
of pole-axes was between me and Wilson, for
Barker's men blocked the mouth of the road in
two rigid lines. But through them and through
the dusk I could hear the clear orders and the
clank of arms, and see the green army of Wilson
marching by towards the west. They were
our great fighting-men. Wilson had filled

234

The Great Army of South Kensington

them with his own fire; in a few days they had
become veterans. Each of them wore a silver
medal of a pump, to boast that they alone
of all the allied armies had stood victorious in
Pump Street.

"I managed to slip past the detachment of
Barker's Blues, who are guarding the end of
Pembridge Road, and a sharp spell of running
brought me to the tail of Wilson's green army
as it swung down the road in pursuit of the flying
Wayne. The dusk had deepened into almost
total darkness; for some time I only heard
the throb of the marching pace. Then sud-
denly there was a cry, and the tall fighting
men were flung back on me, almost crushing
me, and again the lanterns swung and jingled,
and the cold nozzles of great horses pushed
into the press of us. They had turned and
charged us.

" 'You fools !' came the voice of Wilson,
cleaving our panic with a splendid cold
anger. 'Don't you see? the horses have no
riders P

"It was true. We were being plunged at by
a stampede of horses with empty saddles.
What could it mean? Had Wayne met some
of our men and been defeated? Or had he flung
these horses at us as some kind of ruse or mad

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The Napoleon of Notting Hill

new mode of warfare, such as he seemed bent on
inventing? Or did he and his men want to get
away in disguise? Or did they want to hide in
houses somewhere?

"Never did I admire any man's intellect
(even my own) so much as I did Wilson's at
that moment. Without a word, he simply
pointed the halberd (which he still grasped) to
the southern side of the road. As you know,
the streets running up to the ridge of Campden
Hill from the main road are peculiarly steep,
they are more like sudden flights of stairs. We
were just opposite Aubrey Road, the steepest of
all; up that it would have been far more diffi-
cult to urge half-trained horses than to run up on
one's feet.

" 'Left wheel !' hallooed Wilson. They have
gone up here/ he added to me, who happened to
be at his elbow.

" 'Why?' I ventured to ask.

" ' Can't say for certain,' replied the Bays-
water General. 'They've gone up here in a great
hurry anyhow. They've simply turned their
horses loose, because they couldn't take them
up. I fancy I know. I fancy they're trying
to get over the ridge to Kensington or Ham-
mersmith, or somewhere, and are striking
up here because it's just beyond the end of our

236

The Great Army of South Kensington

line. Damned fools, not to have gone further
along the road, though. They've only just
shaved our last outpost. Lambert is hardly
four hundred yards from here. And I've sent
him word.'

" ' Lambert !' I said. 'Not young Wilfrid Lam-
bert— my old friend.'

" 'Wilfrid Lambert's his name,' said the Gen-
eral; "used to be a 'man about town;' silly
fellow with a big nose. That kind of man
always volunteers for some war or other. And
what's funnier, he generally isn't half bad at it.
Lambert is distinctly good. The yellow West
Kensingtons I always reckoned the weakest
part of the army; but he has pulled them
together uncommonly well, though he's sub-
ordinate to Swindon, who's a donkey. In the
attack from Pembridge Road the other night he
showed great pluck.'

" 'He has shown greater pluck than that,' I
said. 'He has criticised my sense of humour.
That was his first engagement.'

"This remark was, I am sorry to say, lost on
the admirable commander of the allied forces.
We were in the act of climbing the last half of
Aubrey Road, which is so abrupt a slope that it
looked like an old-fashioned map leaning up
against the wall. There are lines of little trees,

237

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

one above the other, as in the old-fashioned
map.

"We reached the top of it, panting some-
what, and were just about to turn the corner
by a place called (in chivalrous anticipation of
our wars of sword and axe) Tower Crecy, when
we were suddenly knocked in the stomach (I
can use no other term) by a horde of men
hurled back upon us. They wore the red
uniform of Wayne; their halberds were broken;
their foreheads bleeding; but the mere impetus
of their retreat staggered us as we stood at the
last ridge of the slope.

" 'Good old Lambert !' yelled out, suddenly, the
stolid Mr. Wilson of Bayswater, in an uncon-
trollable excitement. 'Damned jolly old Lam-
bert ! He's got there already ! He's driving them
back on us! Hurrah! hurrah! Forward the
Green Guards!'

"We swung round the corner eastwards, Wil-
son running first, brandishing the halberd.

"Will you pardon a little egotism ? Every one
likes a little egotism, when it takes the form,
as mine does in this case, of a disgraceful confes-
sion. The thing is really a little interesting,
because it shows how the merely artistic habit
has bitten into men like me. It was the

most intensely exciting occurrence that had ever

238

The Great Army of South Kensington

come to me in my life; and I was really in-
tensely excited about it. And yet, as we turned
that corner, the first impression I had was of
something that had nothing to do with the fight
at all. I was stricken from the sky as by a
thunderbolt, by the height of the Waterworks
Tower on Campden Hill. I don't know whether
Londoners generally realise how high it looks
when one comes out, in this way, almost
immediately under it. For the second it
seemed to me that at the foot of it even
human war was a triviality. For the second I
felt as if I had been drunk with some trivial
orgie, and that I had been sobered by the shock
of that shadow. A moment afterwards, I
realised that tinder it was going on something
more enduring than stone, and something
wilder than the dizziest height — the agony of
man. And I knew that compared to that, this
overwhelming tower was itself a triviality ; it was
a mere stalk of stone which humanity could snap
like a stick.

"I don't know why I have talked so much about
this silly old Waterworks Tower, which at the
very best was only a tremendous back-
ground. It was that, certainly, a sombre and
awful landscape, against which our figures were
relieved. But I think the real reason was, that

239

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

there was in my own mind so sharp a transition
from the tower of stone to the man of flesh. For
what I saw first when I had shaken off, as it
were, the shadow of the tower, was a man, and a
man I knew.

"Lambert stood at the further corner of the
street that curved round the tower, his figure
outlined in some degree by the beginning of
moonrise. He looked magnificent, a hero; but
he looked something much more interesting
than that. He was, as it happened, in almost
precisely the same swaggering attitude in which
he had stood nearly fifteen years ago, when he
swung his walking-stick and struck it into the
ground, and told me that all my subtlety was
drivel. And, upon my soul, I think he required
more courage to say that than to fight as he does
now. For then he was fighting against some-
thing that was in the ascendant, fashionable, and
victorious. And now he is fighting (at the risk
of his life, no doubt) merely against something
which is already dead, which is impossible,
futile; of which nothing has been more impos-
sible and futile than this very sortie which
has brought him into contact with it. People
nowadays allow infinitely too little for the
psychological sense of victory as a factor in
affairs. Then he was attacking the degraded

240

The Great Army of South Kensington

but undoubtedly victorious Quin; now he is
attacking the interesting but totally extinguished
Wayne.

"His name recalls me to the details of the
scene. The facts were these. A line of red
halberdiers, headed by Wayne, were marching
up the street, close under the northern wall, which
is, in fact, the bottom of a sort of dyke or forti-
fication of the Waterworks. Lambert and his
yellow West Kensingtons had that instant
swept round the corner and had shaken the
Waynites heavily, hurling back a few of the more
timid, as I have just described, into our
very arms. When our force struck the tail of
Wayne's, every one knew that all was up with
him. His favourite military barber was struck
down. His grocer was stunned. He him-
self was hurt in the thigh, and reeled
back against the wall. We had him in a trap
with two jaws. 'Is that you?' shouted Lambert,
genially, to Wilson, across the hemmed-in host
of Notting Hill. That's about the ticket/ re-
plied General Wilson; 'keep them under the
wall.'

"The men of Notting Hill were falling fast.
Adam Wayne threw up his long arms to the
wall above him, and with a spring stood upon
it, a gigantic figure against the moon. He tore

241

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

the banner out of the hands of the standard-
bearer below him, and shook it out suddenly
above our heads, so that it was like thunder in
the heavens.

" 'Round the Red Lion !' he cried. 'Swords
round the Red Lion! Halberds round the
Red Lion! They are the thorns round the
rose.'

"His voice and the crack of the banner made
a momentary rally, and Lambert, whose idiotic
face was almost beautiful with battle, felt it as
by an instinct, and cried —

" 'Drop your public-house flag, you footler !
Drop it!'

" 'The banner of the Red Lion seldom stoops,'
said Wayne, proudly, letting it out luxuriantly on
the night wind.

"The next moment I knew that poor Adam's
sentimental theatricality had cost him much.
Lambert was on the wall at a bound, his sword
in his teeth, and had slashed at Wayne's
head before he had time to draw his sword,
his hands being busy with the enormous flag.
He stepped back only just in time to avoid
the first cut, and let the flag-staff fall, so that
the spear-blade at the end of it pointed to
Lambert.

" The banner stoops,' cried Wayne, in a voice
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The Great Army of South Kensington

that must have startled streets. 'The banner
of Netting Hill stoops to a hero.' And with
the words he drove the spear-point and half
the flag-staff through Lambert's body and dropped
him dead upon the road below, a stone upon the
stones of the street.

" 'Notting Hill ! Notting Hill !' cried Wayne,
in a sort of divine rage. 'Her banner is
all the holier for the blood of a brave enemy!
Up on the wall, patriots ! Up on the wall ! Not-
ting Hill !'

"With his long strong arm he actually
dragged a man up on to the wall to be silhouetted
against the moon, and more and more men
climbed up there, pulled themselves and were
pulled, till clusters and crowds of the half-
massacred men of Pump Street massed upon the
wall above us.

" 'Notting Hill ! Notting Hill !' cried Wayne,
unceasingly.

' 'Well, what about Bayswater ?' said a worthy
working-man in Wilson's army, irritably. 'Bays-
water for ever!'

" 'We have won !' cried Wayne, striking
his flag-staff in the ground. 'Bayswater
for ever! We have taught our enemies
patriotism !'

" 'OK, cut these fellows up and have done
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The Napoleon of Notting Hill

with it!' cried one of Lambert's lieutenants,
who was reduced to something bordering on
madness by the responsibility of succeeding to
the command.

" 'Let us by all means try,' said Wilson,
grimly; and the two armies closed round the
third.

"I simply cannot describe what followed. I
am sorry, but there is such a thing as physical
fatigue, as physical nausea, and, I may add, as
physical terror. Suffice it to say that the above
paragraph was written about n p.m., and that
it is now about 2 a.m., and that the battle is
not finished, and is not likely to be. Suffice it
further to say that down the steep streets which
lead from the Waterworks Tower to the Not-
ting Hill High Road, blood has been running,
and is running, in great red serpents, that
curl out into the main thoroughfare and shine in
the moon.

"Later. — The final touch has been given to all
this terrible futility. Hours have passed; morn-
ing has broken ; men are still swaying and fight-
ing at the foot of the tower and round the corner
of Aubrey Road ; the fight has not finished. But
I know it is a farce.

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The Great Army of South Kensington

"News has just come to show that Wayne's
amazing sortie, followed by the amazing resist-
ance through a whole night on the wall of the
Waterworks, is as if it had not been. What
was the object of that strange exodus we shall
probably never know, for the simple reason that
every one who knew will probably be cut to
pieces in the course of the next two or three
hours.

"I have heard, about three minutes ago, that
Buck and Buck's methods have won after all.
He was perfectly right, of course, when one
conies to think of it, in holding that it was
physically impossible for a street to defeat a
city. While we thought he was patrolling the
eastern gates with his Purple army; while we
were rushing about the streets and waving
halberds and lanterns; while poor old Wilson
was scheming like Moltke and fighting like
Achilles to entrap the wild Provost of Notting
Hill, — Mr. Buck, retired draper, has simply
driven down in a hansom cab and done some-
thing about as plain as butter and about as
useful and nasty. He has gone down to South
Kensington, Brompton, and Fulham, and by
spending about four thousand pounds of his
private means, has raised an army of nearly as
many men; that is to say, an army big enough

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The Napoleon of Notting Hill

to beat, not only Wayne, but Wayne and all his
present enemies put together. The army, I under-
stand, is encamped along High Street, Kensing-
ton, and fills it from the Church to Addison Road
Bridge. It is to advance by ten different roads
uphill to the north.

"I cannot endure to remain here. Every-
thing makes it worse than it need be. The
dawn, for instance, has broken round Campden
Hill; splendid spaces of silver, edged with
gold, are torn out of the sky. Worse still,
Wayne and his men feel the dawn; their faces,
though bloody and pale, are strangely hopeful
. . . insupportably pathetic. Worst of all, for
the moment they are winning. If it were not
for Buck and the new army they might just, and
only just, win.

"I repeat, I cannot stand it. It is like watch-
ing that wonderful play of old Maeterlinck's
(you know my partiality for the healthy, jolly
old authors of the nineteenth century), in
which one has to watch the quiet conduct of
people inside a parlour, while knowing that the
very men are outside the door whose word can
blast it all with tragedy. And this is worse,
for the men are not talking, but writhing and
bleeding and dropping dead for a thing that is
already settled — and settled against them. The

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The Great Army of South Kensington

great grey masses of men still toil and tug and
sway hither and thither around the great grey
tower; and the tower is still motionless, as it
will always be motionless. These men will be
Crushed before the sun is set; and new men
will arise and be crushed, and new wrongs
done, and tyranny will always rise again like
the sun, and injustice will always be as fresh
as the flowers of spring. And the stone
tower will always look down on it. Matter,
in its brutal beauty, will always look down
on those who are mad enough to consent to
die, and yet more mad, since they consent to
live."

Thus ended abruptly the first and last contribu-
tion of the Special Correspondent of the Court
Journal to that valued periodical.

The Correspondent himself, as has been said,
was simply sick and gloomy at the last news of
the triumph of Buck. He slouched sadly down
the steep Aubrey Road, up which he had the
night before run in so unusual an excitement,
and strolled out into the empty dawn-lit main
road, looking vaguely for a cab. He saw
nothing in the vacant space except a blue-
and-gold glittering thing, running very fast,
which looked at first like a very tall beetle,

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The Napoleon of Notting Hill

but turned out, to his great astonishment, to be
Barker.

"Have you heard the good news?" asked that
gentleman.

"Yes," said Quin, with a measured voice. "I
have heard the glad tidings of great joy. Shall
we take a hansom down to Kensington? I see
one over there."

They took the cab, and, were, in four minutes,
fronting the ranks of the multitudinous and
invincible army. Quin had not spoken a word
all the way, and something about him had
prevented the essentially impressionable Barker
from speaking either.

The great army, as it moved up Kensington
High Street, calling many heads to the number-
less windows, for it was long indeed — longer than
the lives of most of the tolerably young — since
such an army had been seen in London. Com-
pared with the vast organisation which was now
swallowing up the miles, with Buck at its head
as leader, and the King hanging at its tail as
journalist, the whole story of our problem was
insignificant. In the presence of that army the
red Notting Hills and the green Bayswaters
were alike tiny and straggling groups. In its
presence the whole struggle round Pump Street
was like an ant-hill under the hoof of an ox.

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The Great Army of South Kensington

Every man who felt or looked at that infinity of
men knew that it was the triumph of Buck's
brutal arithmetic. Whether Wayne was right
or wrong, wise or foolish, was quite a fair mat-
ter for discussion. But it was a matter of
history. At the foot of Church Street, opposite
Kensington Church, they paused in their glowing
good humour.

"Let us send some kind of messenger or herald
up to them," said Buck, turning to Barker and
the King. "Let us send and ask them to cave in
without more muddle."

"What shall we say to them?" said Barker,
'doubtfully.

"The facts of the case are quite sufficient,"
rejoined Buck. "It is the facts of the case that
make an army surrender. Let us simply say
that our army that is fighting their army,
and their army that is fighting our army,
amount altogether to about a thousand men. Say
that we have four thousand. It is very simple.
Of the thousand fighting, they have at the
very most, three hundred, so that, with those
three hundred, they have now to fight four
thousand seven hundred men. Let them do it
if it amuses them."

And the Provost of North Kensington

laughed.

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The Napoleon of Netting Hill

The herald who was despatched up Church
Street in all the pomp of the South Kensington
blue and gold, with the Three Birds on his tabard,
was attended by two trumpeters.

"What will they do when they consent?"
asked Barker, for the sake of saying some-
thing in the sudden stillness of that immense
army.

"I know my Wayne very well," said Buck,
laughing. "When he submits he will send a red
herald flaming with the Lion of Netting Hill.
Even defeat will be delightful to him, since it is
formal and romantic."

The King, who had strolled up to the head of
the line, broke silence for the first time.

"I shouldn't wonder," he said, "if he defied
you, and didn't send the herald after all. I don't
think you do know your Wayne quite so well as
you think."

"All right, your Majesty," said Buck, easily;
"if it isn't disrespectful, I'll put my political cal-
culations in a very simple form. I'll lay you ten
pounds to a shilling the herald comes with the
surrender."

"All right," said Auberon. "I may be wrong,
but it's my notion of Adam Wayne that he'll die
in his city, and that, till he is dead, it will not be
a safe property."

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The Great Army of South Kensington

"The bet's made, your Majesty," said Buck.

Another long silence ensued, in the course of
which Barker alone, amid the motionless
army, strolled and stamped in his restless
way.

Then Buck suddenly leant forward.

"It's taking your money, your Majesty," he
said. "I knew it was. There comes the herald
from Adam Wayne."

"It's not," cried the King, peering forward also.
"You brute, it's a red omnibus."

"It's not," said Buck, calmly; and the King
did not answer, for down the centre of the spa-
cious and silent Church Street was walking,
beyond question, the herald of the Red Lion, with
two trumpeters.

Buck had something in him which taught
him how to be magnanimous. In his hour of
success he felt magnanimous towards Wayne,
whom he really admired; magnanimous towards
the King, off whom he had scored so publicly;
and, above all, magnanimous towards Barker,
who was the titular leader of this vast South
Kensington army, which his own talent had
evoked.

"General Barker," he said, bowing, "do you
propose now to receive the message from the be-
sieged ?"

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The Napoleon of Notting Hill

Barker bowed also, and advanced towards the
herald.

"Has your master, Mr. Adam Wayne, received
our request for surrender?" he asked.

The herald conveyed a solemn and respectful
affirmative.

Barker resumed, coughing slightly, but encour-
aged.

"What answer does your master send ?"

The herald again inclined himself sub-
missively, and answered in a kind of mono-
tone.

"My message is this. Adam Wayne, Lord
High Provost of Notting Hill, under the
charter of King Auberon and the laws of God
and all mankind, free and of a free city, greets
James Barker, Lord High Provost of South
Kensington, by the same rights free and
honourable, leader of the army of the South.
With all friendly reverence, and with all con-
stitutional consideration, he desires James
Barker to lay down his arms, and the whole
army under his command to lay down their
arms also."

Before the words were ended the King had
run forward into the open space with shining
eyes. The rest of the staff and the forefront
of the army were literally struck breathless.

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The Great Army of South Kensington

When they recovered they began to laugh
beyond restraint; the revulsion was too
sudden.

"The Lord High Provost of Notting Hill,"
continued the herald, "does not propose, in the
event of your surrender, to use his victory for
any of those repressive purposes which others
have entertained against him. He will leave you
your free laws and your free cities, your flags
and your governments. He will not destroy the
religion of South Kensington, or crush the old
customs of Bayswater."

An irrepressible explosion of laughter went up
from the forefront of the great army.

"The King must have had something to do
with this humour," said Buck, slapping his thigh.
"It's too deliciously insolent. Barker, have a glass
of wine."

And in his conviviality he actually sent a
soldier across to the restaurant opposite the
church and brought out two glasses for a
toast.

When the laughter Had died down, the herald
continued quite monotonously —

"In the event of your surrendering your
arms and dispersing under the superintendence
of our forces, these local rights of yours shall
be carefully observed. In the event of your

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The Napoleon of Notting Hill

not doing so, the Lord High Provost of Not-
ting Hill desires to announce that he has just
captured the Waterworks Tower, just above
you, on Campden Hill, and that within ten min-
utes from now, that is, on the reception
through me of your refusal, he will open the great
reservoir and flood the whole valley where you
stand in thirty feet of water. God save King
Auberon !"

Buck had dropped his glass and sent a great
splash of wine over the road.

"But — but — " he said; and then by a last and
splendid effort of his great sanity, looked the facts
in the face.

"We must surrender," he said. "You could
do nothing against fifty thousand tons of
water coming down a steep hill, ten minutes
hence. We must surrender. Our four thousand
men might as well be four. Vicisti Galilae! Per-
kins, you may as well get me another glass of
wine."

In this way the vast army of South Kensing-
ton surrendered and the Empire of Notting Hill
began. One further fact in this connection
is perhaps worth mentioning — the fact that,
after his victory, Adam Wayne caused the
great tower on Campden Hill to be plated with
gold and inscribed with a great epitaph, saying

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The Great Army of South Kensington

that it was the monument of Wilfrid Lambert,
the heroic defender of the place, and sur-
mounted with a statue, in which his large
nose was done something less than jus-
tice to.

255

BOOK V

CHAPTER I — "The Empire of Notting
Hill"

ON the evening of the third of Octo-
ber, twenty years after the great
victory of Notting Hill, which
gave it the dominion of London, King
Auberon, came, as of old, out of Kensing-
ton Palace.

He had changed little, save for a streak or
two of grey in his hair, for his face had always
been old, and his step slow, and, as it were,
decrepit.

If he looked old, it was not because of any-
thing physical or mental. It was because he
still wore, with a quaint conservatism, the
frock-coat and high hat of the days before the
great war. "I have survived the Deluge," he
said. "I am a pyramid, and must behave as
such."

As he passed up the street the Kensingtonians,
in their picturesque blue smocks, saluted him
as a King, and then looked after him as a
curiosity. It seemed odd to them that men had
once worn so elvish an attire.

The King, cultivating the walk attributed to
the oldest inhabitant ("Gaffer Auberon" his

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The Napoleon of Notting Hill

friends were now confidentially desired to call
him), went toddling northward. He paused,
with reminiscence in his eye, at the Southern
Gate of Notting Hill, one of those nine great
gates of bronze and steel, wrought with reliefs
of the old battles, by the hand of Chiffy him-
self.

"Ah!" he said, shaking his Head and assum-
ing an unnecessary air of age, and a provincialism
of accent, "Ah! I mind when there warn't none
of this here."

He passed through the Ossington Gate, sur-
mounted by a great lion, wrought in red copper
on yellow brass, with the motto, "Nothing 111."
The guard in red and gold saluted him with his
halberd.

It was about sunset, and the lamps were
being lit. Auberon paused to look at them, for
they were Chifry's finest work, and his artistic
eye never failed to feast on them. In memory
of the Great Battle of the Lamps, each great
iron lamp was surmounted by a veiled figure,
sword in hand, holding over the flame an iron
hood or extinguisher, as if ready to let it fall
if the armies of the South and West should
again show their flags in the city. Thus no
child in Notting Hill could play about the
streets without the very lamp-posts reminding

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The Empire of Notting Hill

him of the salvation of his country in the dread-
ful year.

"Old Wayne was right in a way," com-
mented the King. "The sword does make
things beautiful. It has made the whole world
romantic by now. And to think people once
thought me a buffoon for suggesting a romantic
Notting Hill. Deary me, deary me (I think
that is the expression). It seems like a previous
existence."

Turning a corner he found himself in Pump
Street, opposite the four shops which Adam
Wayne had studied twenty years before. He
entered idly the shop of Mr. Mead, the grocer.
Mr. Mead was somewhat older, like the rest of
the world, and his red beard, which he now
wore with a moustache, and long and full, was
partly blanched and discoloured. He was
dressed in a long and richly embroidered robe
of blue, brown, and crimson, interwoven with
an Eastern complexity of pattern, and covered
with obscure symbols and pictures, representing
his wares passing from hand to hand and from
nation to nation. Round his neck was the
chain with the Blue Argosy cut in turquoise,
which he wore as Grand Master of the Grocers.
The whole shop had the sombre and sumptuous
look of its owner. The wares were displayed

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The Napoleon of Notting Hill

as prominently as in the old days, but they
were now blended and arranged with a sense of
tint and grouping, too often neglected by the
dim grocers of those forgotten days. The
wares were shown plainly, but shown not so
much as an old grocer would have shown his
stock, but rather as an educated virtuoso would
have shown his treasures. The tea was stored
in great blue and green vases, inscribed with the
nine indispensable sayings of the wise men of
China. Other vases of a confused orange and
purple, less rigid and dominant, more humble
and dreamy, stored symbolically the tea of India.
A row of caskets of a simple silvery metal
contained tinned meats. Each was wrought
with some rude but rhythmic form, as a shell, a
horn, a fish, or an apple, to indicate what material
had been canned in it.

"Your Majesty," said Mr. Mead, sweep-
ing an Oriental reverence. "This is an
honour to me, but yet more an honour to
the city."

Auberon took off his hat.

"Mr. Mead," he said, "Notting Hill,
whether in giving or taking, can deal in
nothing but honour. Do you happen to sell
liquorice ?"

"Liquorice, sire," said Mr. Mead, "is not the
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The Empire of Notting Hill

least important of our benefits out of the dark
heart of Arabia."

And going reverently towards a green and sil-
ver canister, made in the form of an Arabian
mosque, he proceeded to serve his customer.

"I was just thinking, Mr. Mead," said the
King reflectively, "I don't know why I should
think about it just now, but I was just thinking of
twenty years ago. Do you remember the times
before the war?"

The grocer, having wrapped up the liquorice
sticks in a piece of paper (inscribed with some
appropriate sentiment), lifted his large grey
eyes dreamily, and looked at the darkening sky
outside.

"Oh yes, your Majesty," he said. "I remem-
ber these streets before the Lord Provost be-
gan to rule us. I can't remember how we felt
very well. All the great songs and the fight-
ing change one so; and I don't think we can
really estimate all we owe to the Provost; but
I can remember his coming into this very shop
twenty-two years ago, and I remember the
things he said. The singular thing is that
as far as I remember I thought the things he
said odd at that time. Now it's the things that
I said, as far as I can recall them, that seem to
me odd — as odd as a madman's antics."

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The Napoleon of Notting Hill

"Ah!" said the King; and looked at him with
an unfathomable quietness.

"I thought nothing of being a grocer then,"
he said. "Isn't that odd enough for anybody?
I thought nothing of all the wonderful places
that my goods come from, and wonderful ways
that they are made. I did not know that I was
for all practical purposes a king with slaves
spearing fishes near the secret-pool, and gather-
ing fruits in the islands under the world. My
mind was a blank on the thing. I was as mad as
a hatter."

The King turned also, and stared out into the
dark, where the great lamps that commemorated
the battle were already flaming.

"And is this the end of poor old Wayne?"
he said, half to himself. "To inflame every
one so much that he is lost himself in the blaze.
Is this his victory, that he, my incomparable
Wayne, is now only one in a world of Waynes?
Has he conquered and become by conquest com-
monplace? Must Mr. Mead, the grocer, talk as
high as he? Lord ! what a strange world in which
a man cannot remain unique even by taking the
trouble to go mad."

And he went dreamily out of the shop.

He paused outside the next one almost pre-
cisely as the Provost had done two decades before.

264

"A F1MI EVENING, SIR," SAID THE CHEMIST

The Empire of Notting Hill

"How uncommonly creepy this shop looks,"
he said. "But yet somehow encouragingly
creepy, invitingly creepy. It looks like some-
thing in a jolly old nursery story in which you
are frightened out of your skin, and yet know
that things always end well. The way those
low sharp gables are carved like great black
bat's wings folded down, and the way those
queer-coloured bowls underneath are made to
shine like giant's eye-balls. It looks like a
benevolent warlock's hut. It is apparently a
chemist's."

Almost as he spoke, Mr. Bowles, the chemist,
came to his shop door in a long black velvet
gown and hood, monastic as it were, but yet
with a touch of the diabolic. His hair was
still quite black, and his face even paler than of
old. The only spot of colour he carried was a
red star cut in some precious stone of strong
tint, hung on his breast. He belonged to the
Society of the Red Star of Charity, founded on
the lamps displayed by doctors and chemists.

"A fine evening, sir," said the chemist.
"Why, I can scarcely be mistaken in supposing
it to be your Majesty. Pray step inside and
share a bottle of sal-volatile, or anything that
may take your fancy. As it happens there is
an old acquaintance of your Majesty's in my

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The Napoleon of Notting Hill

shop carousing (if I may be permitted the term)
upon that beverage at this moment."

The King entered the shop, which was an
Aladdin's garden of shades and hues, for as the
chemist's scheme of colour was more brilliant than
the grocer's scheme, so it was arranged with even
more delicacy and fancy. Never, if the phrase
may be employed, had such a nosegay of medi-
cines been presented to the artistic eye.

But even the solemn rainbow of that evening
interior was rivalled or even eclipsed by the
figure standing in the centre of the shop. His
form, which was a large and stately one, was
clad in a brilliant blue velvet, cut in the richest
Renaissance fashion, and slashed so as to show
gleams and gaps of a wonderful lemon or pale
yellow. He had several chains round his neck
and his plumes, which were of several tints of
bronze and gold, hung down to the great gold
hilt of his long sword. He was drinking a
dose of sal-volatile, and admiring its opal tint.
The King advanced with a slight mystification
towards the tall figure, whose face was in shadow,
then he said —

"By the Great Lord of Luck, Barker !"

The figure removed his plumed cap, showing
the same dark head and long, almost equine,
face which the King had so often seen rising

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The Empire of Notting Hill

out of the high collar of Bond Street. Except
for a grey patch on each temple, it was totally
unchanged.

"Your Majesty," said Barker, "this is a
meeting nobly retrospective, a meeting that has
about it a certain October gold. I drink to old
days ;" and he finished his sal- volatile with simple
feeling.

"I am delighted to see you again, Barker,"
said the King. "It is, indeed, long since we
met. What with my travels in Asia Minor,
and my book having to be written (you have
read my 'Life of Prince Albert for Children/ of
course), we have scarcely met twice since the
Great War. That is twenty years ago."

"I wonder," said Barker, thoughtfully, "if I
might speak freely to your Majesty."

"Well," said Auberon, "it's rather late in the
day to start speaking respectfully. Flap away, my
bird of freedom."

"Well, your Majesty," replied Barker, lower-
ing his voice, "I don't think it will be so long to
the next war."

"What do you mean?" asked Auberon.

"We will stand this insolence no longer,"
burst out Barker, fiercely. "We are not slaves
because Adam Wayne twenty years ago cheated
us with a water-pipe. Notting Hill is Notting

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The Napoleon of Notting Hill

Hill; it is not tHe world. We in South
Kensington, we also have memories — aye, and
hopes. If they fought for these trumpery
shops and a few lamp-posts, shall we not fight
for the great High Street and the sacred Natural
History Museum ?"

"Great Heavens!" said the astounded Au-
beron. "Will wonders never cease? Have the
two greatest marvels been achieved? Have
you turned altruistic, and has Wayne turned
selfish? Are you the patriot, and he the
tyrant?"

"It is not from Wayne himself altogether that
the evil comes," answered Barker. "He, in-
deed, is now mostly wrapped in dreams, and
sits with his old sword beside the fire. But
Notting Hill is the tyrant, your Majesty. Its
Council and its crowds have been so intoxicated
by the spreading over the whole city of Wayne's
old ways and visions, that they try to meddle
with every one, and rule every one, and civilise
every one, and tell every one what is good for
him. I do not deny the great impulse which
his old war, wild as it seemed, gave to the civic
life of our time. It came when I was still a
young man, and I admit it enlarged my career.
But we are not going to see our own cities
flouted and thwarted from day to day because

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The Empire of Notting Hill

of something Wayne did for us all nearly a
quarter of a century ago. I am just waiting
here for news upon this very matter. It is
rumoured that Notting Hill has vetoed the
statue of General Wilson they are putting up
opposite Chepstow Place. If that is so, it is
a black and white shameless breach of the terms
on which we surrendered to Turnbull after the
battle of the Tower. We were to keep our
own customs and self-government. If that
is so — "

"It is so," said a deep voice; and both men
turned round.

A burly figure in purple robes, with a silver
eagle hung round his neck and moustaches
almost as florid as his plumes, stood in the
doorway.

"Yes," he said, acknowledging the King's start,
"I am Provost Buck, and the news is true. These
men of the Hill have forgotten that we fought
round the Tower as well as they did, and
that it is sometimes foolish, as well as base, to
despise the conquered."

"Let us step outside," said Barker, with a grim
composure.

Buck did so, and stood rolling his eyes up and
down the lamp-lit street.

"I would like to have a go at smashing all
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The Napoleon of dotting Hill

this," he muttered, "though I am over sixty. I
would like — "

His voice ended in a cry, and he reeled back a
step, with his hands to his eyes, as he had done
in those streets twenty years before.

"Darkness !" he cried — "darkness again ! What
does it mean?"

For in truth every lamp in the street had
gone out, so that they could not see even each
other's outline, except faintly. The voice of the
chemist came with startling cheerfulness out of
the density.

"Oh, don't you know?" he said. "Did they
never tell you this is the Feast of the Lamps,
the anniversary of the great battle that almost
lost and just saved Notting Hill? Don't you
know, your Majesty, that on this night twen-
ty-one years ago we saw Wilson's green uni-
forms charging down this street, and driving
Wayne and Turnbull back upon the gas-works,
righting with their handful of men like fiends from
hell? And that then, in that great hour, Wayne
sprang through a window of the gas-works,
with one blow of his hand brought darkness on
the whole city, and then with a cry like a
lion's, that was heard through four streets, flew
at Wilson's men, sword in hand, and swept
them, bewildered as they were, and ignorant of

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The Empire of Netting Hill

the map, clear out of the sacred street again ? And
don't you know that upon that night every year
all lights are turned out for half an hour while
we sing the Notting Hill anthem in the darkness ?
Hark ! there it begins."

Through the night came a crash of drums, and
then a strong swell of human voices —

"When the world was in the balance, there was night on

Notting Hill,
(There was night on Notting Hill): it was nobler than the

day;

On the cities where the lights are and the firesides glow,
From the seas and from the deserts came the thing we did

not know,

Came the darkness, came the darkness, came the darkness
on the foe,

And the old guard of God turned to bay.
For the old guard of God turns to bay, turns to bay,
And the stars fall down before it ere its banners fall to-day.
For when armies were arcund us as a howling and a horde,
When falling was the citadel and broken was the sword,
The darkness came upon them like the Dragon of the Lord,
When the old guard of God turned to bay."

The voices were just uplifting themselves in a
second verse, when they were stopped by a scurry
and a yell. Barker had bounded into the street
with a cry of "South Kensington!" and a
drawn dagger. In less time than man could
blink, the whole packed street was full of curses

and struggling. Barker was flung back against

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The Napoleon of Notting Hill

the shop-front, but used the second only to draw
his sword as well as his dagger, and calling out',
"This is not the first time I've come through the
thick of you," flung himself again into the press.
It was evident that he had drawn blood at last,
for a more violent outcry arose, and many other
knives and swords were discernible in the faint
light. Barker, after having wounded more than
one man, seemed on the point of being flung
back again, when Buck suddenly stepped out
into the street. He had no weapon, for he
affected rather the peaceful magnificence of the
great burgher, than the pugnacious dandyism
which had replaced the old sombre dandyism
in Barker. But with a blow of his clenched
fist he broke the pane of the next shop, which
was the old curiosity shop, and, plunging in his
hand, snatched a kind of Japanese scimitar, and
calling out, "Kensington ! Kensington !" rushed to
Barker's assistance.

Barker's sword was broken, but he was laying
about him with his dagger. Just as Buck ran
up, a man of Notting Hill struck Barker down,
but Buck struck the man down on top of him,
and Barker sprang up again, the blood running
down his face.

Suddenly all these cries were cloven by a
great voice, that seemed to fall out of heaven.

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The Empire of Notting Hill

It was terrible to Buck and Barker and the King
from its seeming to come out the empty skies;
but it was more terrible because it was a familiar
voice, and one which at the same time they had
not heard for so long.

"Turn up the lights," said the voice from
above them, and for a moment there was no reply,
but only a tumult.

"In the name of Notting Hill, and of the great
Council of the City, turn up the lights."

There was again a tumult and a vagueness
for a moment, then the whole street and every
object in it sprang suddenly out of the darkness,
as every lamp sprang into life. And looking up
they saw, standing upon a balcony near the roof
of one of the highest houses, the figure and the
face of Adam Wayne, his red hair blowing behind
him, a little streaked with grey.

"What is this, my people?" he said. "Is it
altogether impossible to make a thing good
without it immediately insisting on being
wicked? The glory of Notting Hill in having
achieved its independence, has been enough
for me to dream of for many years, as I sat
beside the fire. Is it really not enough for
you, who have had so many other affairs to
excite and distract you? Notting Hill is a
nation. Why should it condescend to be a

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The Napoleon of Notting Hill

mere Empire? You wish to pull down the
statue of General Wilson, which the men of
Bayswater have so rightly erected in West-
bourne Grove. Fools! Who erected that
statue? Did Bayswater erect it? No. Not-
ting Hill erected it. Do you not see that it is
the glory of our achievement that we have
infected the other cities with the idealism of
Notting Hill? It is we who have created not
only our own side, but both sides of this con-
troversy. O too humble fools — why should you
wish to destroy your enemies? You have done
something more to them. You have created your
enemies. You wish to pull down that gigantic
silver hammer, which stands, like an obelisk, in
the centre of the Broadway of Hammersmith.
Fools! Before Notting Hill arose, did any
person passing through Hammersmith Broad-
way expect to see there a gigantic silver hammer ?
You wish to abolish the great bronze figure of
a knight standing upon the artificial bridge at
Knightsbridge. Fools! Who would have
thought of it before Notting Hill arose? I
have even heard, and with deep pain I have
heard it, that the evil eye of our imperial
envy has been cast towards the remote horizon
of the west, and that we have objected to the
great black monument of a crowned raven,

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The Empire of Notting Hill

which commemorates the skirmish of Ravens-
court Park. Who created all these things?
Were they there before we came? Cannot
you be content with that destiny which was
enough for Athens, which was enough for
Nazareth? the destiny, the humble purpose
of creating a new world. Is Athens angry
because Romans and Florentines have adopted
her phraseology for expressing their own
patriotism? Is Nazareth angry because as a
little village it has become the type of all little
villages out of which, as the Snobs say, no good
can come? Has Athens asked every one to
wear the chlamys? Are all followers of the
Nazarene compelled to wear turbans? No!
but the soul of Athens went forth and made
men drink hemlock, and the soul of Nazareth
went forth and made men consent to be cru-
cified. So has the soul of Notting Hill gone
forth and made men realise what it is to
live in a city. Just as we inaugurated our
symbols and ceremonies, so they have inaugu-
rated theirs; and are you so mad as to con-
tend against them? Notting Hill is right; it
has always been right. It has moulded itself on
its own necessities, its own sine qua non,
it has accepted its own ultimatum. Because
it is a nation it has created itself. And

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The Napoleon of Notting Hill

because it is a nation it can destroy itself.
Notting Hill shall always be the judge. If
it is your will because of this matter of
General Wilson's statue to make war upon
Bays water — "

A roar of cheers broke in upon his words,
and further speech was impossible. Pale to
the lips, the great patriot tried again and again
to speak; but even his authority could not keep
down the dark and roaring masses in the
street below him. He said something further,
but it was not audible. He descended at last
sadly from the garret in which he lived, and
mingled with the crowd at the foot of the houses.
Finding General Turnbull, he put his hand on
his shoulder with a queer affection and gravity,
and said —

"To-morrow, old man, we shall have a new
experience, as fresh as the flowers of spring.
We shall be defeated. You and I have been
through three battles together, and have some-
how or other missed this peculiar delight. It
is unfortunate that we shall not probably be
able to exchange our experiences, because, as it
most annoyingly happens, we shall probably both
be dead."

Turnbull looked dimly surprised.

"I don't mind so much about being dead," he
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The Empire of Notting Hill

said, "but why should you say that we shall be
defeated?"

"The answer is very simple," replied Wayne,
calmly. "It is because we ought to be defeated.
We have been in the most horrible holes before
now ; but in all those I was perfectly certain
that the stars were on our side, and that we ought
to get out. Now, I know that we ought not to
get out ; and that takes away from me everything
with which I won."

As Wayne spoke he started a little, for both
men became aware that a third figure was listen-
ing to them — SL small figure with wondering
eyes.

"Is it really true, my dear Wayne," said the
King, interrupting, "that you think you will be
beaten to-morrow?"

"There can be no doubt about it whatever,"
replied Adam Wayne; "the real reason is the one
of which I have just spoken. But as a conces-
sion to your materialism, I will add that they
have an organised army of a hundred allied cities
against our one. That in itself, however, would
be unimportant."

Quin, with his round eyes, seemed strangely
insistent.

"You are quite sure," he said, "that you must
be beaten?"

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The Napoleon of Notting Hill

"I am afraid," said Turnbull, gloomily, "that
there can be no doubt about it."

"Then," cried the King, flinging out his
arms, "give me a halberd! Give me a halberd,
somebody! I desire all men to witness that I,
Auberon, King of England, do here and now
abdicate and implore the Provost of Notting Hill
to permit me to enlist in his army. Give me a
halberd!"

He seized one from some passing guard, and,
shouldering it, stamped solemnly after the shout-
ing columns of halberdiers which were, by this
time, parading the streets. He had, however,
nothing to do with the wrecking of the statue
of General Wilson, which took place before
morning.

278

CHAPTER II — The Last Battle

THE day was cloudy when Wayne went
down to die with all his army in
Kensington Gardens; it was cloudy
again when that army had been swal-
lowed up by the vast armies of a new world.
There had been an almost uncanny interval
of sunshine, in which the Provost of Notting
Hill, with all the placidity of an onlooker, had
gazed across to the hostile armies on the
great spaces of verdure opposite; the long
strips of green and blue and gold lay
across the park in squares and oblongs
like a proposition in Euclid wrought in a
rich embroidery. But the sunlight was a
weak and, as it were, a wet sunlight, and
was soon swallowed up. Wayne spoke to
the King, with a queer sort of coldness and
languor, as to the military operations. It was
as he had said the night before, that being
deprived of his sense of an impracticable rec-
titude he was, in effect, being deprived of
everything. He was out of date, and at sea in
a mere world of compromise and competition,
of Empire against Empire, of the tolerably right
and the tolerably wrong. When his eye fell on

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The Napoleon of Notting Hill

the King, however, who was marching very
gravely with a top hat and a halberd, it
brightened slightly.

"Well, your Majesty," he said, "you at least
ought to be proud to-day. If your children
are fighting each other, at least those who
win are your children. Other kings have dis-
tributed justice, you have distributed life.
Other kings have ruled a nation, you have
created nations. Others have made kingdoms,
you have begotten them. Look at your children,
father." And he stretched his hand out towards
the enemy.

Auberon did not raise his eyes.

"See how splendidly," cried Wayne, "the new
cities come on — the new cities from across the
river. See where Battersea advances over
there — under the flag of the Lost Dog; and
Putney — don't you see the Man on the White
Boar shining on their standard as the sun
catches it? It is the coming of a new age, your
Majesty. Notting Hill is not a common em-
pire; it is a thing like Athens, the mother of
a mode of life, of a manner of living, which
shall renew the youth of the world — a thing
like Nazareth. When I was young I remem-
ber, in the old dreary days, wiseacres used to
write books about how trains would get faster,

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The Last Battle

and all the world would be one empire, and
tram-cars go to the moon. And even as a child
I used to say to myself, 'Far more likely
that we shall go on the crusades again, or
worship the gods of the city.' And so it has
been. And I am glad, though this is my last
battle."

Even as he spoke there came a crash of steel
from the left, and he turned his head.

"Wilson!'' he cried, with a kind of joy.
"Red Wilson has charged our left. No one
can hold him in; he eats swords. He is as keen
a soldier as Turnbull, but less patient — less
really great. Ha! and Barker is moving.
How Barker has improved; how hand-
some he looks. It is not all having plumes;
it is also having a soul in one's daily life.
Ha!"

And another crash of steel on the right
showed that Barker had closed with Netting
Hill on the other side.

"Turnbull is there!" cried Wayne. "See
him hurl them back! Barker is checked!
Turnbull charges — wins! But our left is
broken. Wilson has smashed Bowles and
Mead, and may turn our flank. Forward, the
Provost's Guard !"

And the whole centre moved forward,
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The Napoleon of Notting Hill

Wayne's face and hair and sword flaming in
the van.

The King ran suddenly forward.

The next instant a great jar that went through
it told that it had met the enemy. And right
over against them through the wood of their own
weapons Auberon saw the Purple Eagle of Buck
of North Kensington.

On the left Red Wilson was storming the
broken ranks, his little green figure conspicuous
even in the tangle of men and weapons, with
the flaming red moustaches and the crown of
laurel. Bowles slashed at his head and tore away
some of the wreath, leaving the rest bloody,
and, with a roar like a bull's, Wilson sprang at
him, and, after a rattle of fencing, plunged his
point into the chemist, who fell, crying
"Notting Hill!" Then the Notting Hillers
wavered, and Bayswater swept them back in con-
fusion. Wilson had carried everything before
him.

On the right, however, Turnbull had carried
the Red Lion banner with a rush against
Barker's men, and the banner of the Golden
Birds bore up with difficulty against it.
Barker's men fell fast. In the centre Wayne
and Buck were engaged, stubborn and confused.
So far as the fighting went, it was precisely

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The Last Battle

equal. But the fighting was a farce. For behind
the three small armies with which Wayne's
small army was engaged lay the great sea
of the allied armies, which looked on as yet as
scornful spectators, but could have broken all four
armies by moving a finger.

Suddenly they did move. Some of the front
contingents, the pastoral chiefs from Shepherd's
Bush, with their spears and fleeces, were seen
advancing, and the rude clans from Paddington
Green. They were advancing for a very good
reason. Buck, of North Kensington, was sig-
nalling wildly; he was surrounded, and totally
cut off. His regiments were a struggling
mass of people, islanded in a red sea of Notting
Hill.

The allies had been too careless and confident.
They had allowed Barker's force to be broken
to pieces by Turnbull, and the moment that
was done, the astute old leader of Notting Hill
swung his men round and attacked Buck behind
and on both sides. At the same moment Wayne
cried "Charge!" and struck him in front like a
thunderbolt.

Two-thirds of Buck's men were cut to pieces
before their allies could reach them. Then the
sea of cities came on with their banners like
breakers, and swallowed Notting Hill for ever.

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The Napoleon of Notting Tlill

The battle was not over, for not one of Wayne's
men would surrender, and it lasted till sundown,
and long after. But it was decided ; the story of
Notting Hill was ended.

When Turnbull saw it, he ceased a moment
from fighting, and looked round him. The even-
ing sunlight struck his face; it looked like a
child's.

"I have had my youth," he said. Then
snatching an axe from a man, he dashed into
the thick of the spears of Shepherd's Bush,
and died somewhere far in the depths of their
reeling ranks. Then the battle roared on;
every man of Notting Hill was slain before
night.

Wayne was standing by a tree alone after the
battle. Several men approached him with axes.
One struck at him. His foot seemed partly to
slip ; but he flung his hand out, and steadied him-
self against the tree.

Barker sprang after him, sword in hand, and
shaking with excitement.

"How large now, my lord," He cried, "is the
Empire of Notting Hill ?"

Wayne smiled in the gathering dark.

"Always as large as this," he said, and
swept his sword round in a semi-circle of
silver.

The Last Battle

Barker dropped, wounded in the neck; and
Wilson sprang over his body like a tiger-cat,
rushing at Wayne. At the same moment there
came behind the Lord of the Red Lion a cry
and a flare of yellow, and a mass of the West
Kensington halberdiers ploughed up the slope,
knee-deep in grass, bearing the yellow ban-
ner of the city before them, and shouting
aloud.

At the same second Wilson went down
under Wayne's sword, seemingly smashed
like a fly. The great sword rose again like a
bird, but Wilson seemed to rise with it, and, his
sword being broken, sprang at Wayne's throat
like a dog. The foremost of the yellow hal-
berdiers had reached the tree and swung his
axe above the struggling Wayne. With a
curse the King whirled up his own halberd and
dashed the blade in the man's face. He
reeled, and rolled down the slope, just as the
furious Wilson was flung on his back again.
And again he was on his feet, and again
at Wayne's throat. Then he was flung again,
but this time laughing triumphantly. Grasped
in his hand was the red and yellow favour
that Wayne wore as Provost of Netting Hill.
He had torn it from the place where it had been
carried for twenty-five years.

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The Napoleon of Notting Hill

With a shout the West Kensington men
closed round Wayne, the great yellow banner
flapping over his head.

"Where is your favour now, Provost?" cried
the West Kensington leader.

And a laugh went up.

Adam struck at the standard-bearer and
brought him reeling forward. As the banner
stooped, he grasped the yellow folds and tore off
a shred. A halberdier struck him on the shoul-
der, wounding bloodily.

"Here is one colour!" he cried, pushing the
yellow into his belt; "and here!" he cried,
pointing to his own blood, " Here is the
other."

At the same instant the shock of a sudden
and heavy halberd laid the King stunned or
dead. In the wild visions of vanishing conscious-
ness, he saw again something that belonged to an
utterly forgotten time, something that he had
seen somewhere long ago in a restaurant. He
saw, with his swimming eyes, red and yellow,
the colours of Nicaragua.

Quin did not see the end. Wilson, wild with
joy, sprang again at Adam Wayne, and the
great sword of Notting Hill was whirled above
once more. Then men ducked instinctively at
the rushing noise of the sword coming down

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The Last Battle

out of the sky, and Wilson of Bayswater was
smashed and wiped down upon the floor like a
fly. Nothing was left of him but a wreck; but
the blade that had broken him was broken. In
dying he had snapped the great sword and the
spell of it ; the sword of Wayne was broken at the
hilt. One rush of the enemy carried Wayne by
force against the tree. They were too close to
use halberd or even sword; they were breast to
breast, even nostrils to nostrils. But Buck got
his dagger free.

"Kill him!" he cried, in a strange stifled
voice. "Kill him! Good or bad, he is none
of us ! Do not be blinded by the face ! . . . God !
have we not been blinded all along!" and he
drew his arm back for a stab and seemed to close
his eyes.

Wayne did not drop the hand that hung on
to the tree-branch. But a mighty heave went
over his breast and his whole huge figure,
like an earthquake over great hills. And with
that convulsion of effort he rent the branch
out of the tree, with tongues of torn
wood. And swaying it once only, he let the
splintered club fall on Buck, breaking his
neck. The planner of the Great Road fell
face foremost dead, with his dagger in a grip of

steel.

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The Napoleon of Notting Hill

"For you and me, and for all brave men, my
brother," said Wayne, in his strange chant,
"there is good wine poured in the inn at the end
of the world."

The packed men made another lurch or
heave towards him; it was almost too dark
to fight clearly. He caught hold of the oak
again, this time getting his hand into a wide
crevice and grasping, as it were, the bowels
of the tree. The whole crowd, numbering
some thirty men, made a rush to tear him
away from it; they hung on with all their
weight and numbers, and nothing stirred. A
solitude could not have been stiller than that
group of straining men. Then there was a faint
sound.

"His hand is slipping," cried two men in exul-
tation.

"You don't know much of him," said another,
grimly (a man of the old war). "More likely
his bone cracks."

"It is neither — by God, it is neither !" said one
of the first two.

"What is it, then ?" asked the second,

"The tree is falling," he replied.

"As the tree falleth, so shall it lie," said
Wayne's voice out of the darkness, and it had
the same sweet and yet horrible air that it had

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The Last Battle

had throughout, of coming from a great distance,
from before or after the event. Even when he
was struggling like an eel or battering like a
madman, he spoke like a spectator. "As the
tree falleth, so shall it lie," he said. "Men have
called that a gloomy text. It is the essence
of all exultation. I am doing now what I have
done all my life, what is the only happiness,
what is the only universality. I am clinging to
something. Let it fall, and there let it lie.
Fools, you go about and see the kingdoms of
the earth, and are liberal, and wise, and cosmo-
politan, which is all that the devil can give you
— all that he could offer to Christ only to be
spurned away. I am doing what the truly wise
do. When a child goes out into the gar-
den and takes hold of a tree, saying, 'Let
this tree be all I have/ that moment its roots
take hold on hell and its branches on the
stars. The joy I have is what the lover
knows when a woman is everything. It is
what a savage knows when his idol is every-
thing. It is what I know when Notting Hill
is everything. I have a city. Let it stand or
fall."

As he spoke, the turf lifted itself like a
living thing, and out of it rose slowly, like
crested serpents, the roots of the oak. Then

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The Napoleon of Notting Hill

the great head of the tree, that seemed a
green cloud among grey ones, swept the sky
suddenly like a broom, and the whole tree
heeled over like a ship, smashing every one
in its fall.

ago

CHAPTER III — Two Voices

IN a place in which there was total darkness
for hours, there was also for hours total
silence. Then a voice spoke out of the
darkness, no one could have told from where, and
said aloud —

"So ends the Empire of Netting Hill. As it
began in blood, so it ended in blood, and all things
are always the same."

And there was silence again, and then again
there was a voice, but it had not the same tone; it
seemed that it was not the same voice.

"If all things are always the same, it is
because they are always heroic. If all things
are always the same, it is because they are
always new. To each man one soul only is
given; to each soul only is given a little power
— the power at some moments to outgrow and
swallow up the stars. If age after age that power
comes upon men, whatever gives it to them is
great. Whatever makes men feel old is mean
— an empire or a skin-flint shop. Whatever
makes men feel young is great — a great war
or a love story. And in the darkest of the
books of God there is written a truth that is
also a riddle. It is of the new things that men

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The Napoleon of Notting Hill

tire — of fashions and proposals and improve-
ments and change. It is the old things that
startle and intoxicate. It is the old things
that are young. There is no sceptic who does
not feel that many have doubted before. There
is no rich and fickle man who does not feel that
all his novelties are ancient. There is no
worshipper of change who does not feel upon
his neck the vast weight of the weariness of
the universe. But we who do the old things are
fed by nature with a perpetual infancy. No man
who is in love thinks that any one has been
in love before. No woman who has a child
thinks that there have been such things as
children. No people that fight for their own city
are haunted with the burden of the broken em-
pires. Yes, oh dark voice, the world is always
the same, for it is always unexpected."

A little gust of wind blew through the night,
and then the first voice answered —

"But in this world there are some, be they
wise or foolish, whom nothing intoxicates.
There are some who see all your disturbances
like a cloud of flies. They know that while
men will la,ugh at your Notting Hill, and will
study and rehearse and sing of Athens and
Jerusalem, Athens and Jerusalem were silly
suburbs like your Notting Hill. They know that

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Two Voices

the earth itself is a suburb, and can feel only
drearily and respectably amused as they move
upon it."

"They are philosophers or they are fools,"
said the other voice. "They are not men. Men
live, as I say, rejoicing from age to age in
something fresher than progress — in the fact
that with every baby a new sun and a new moon
are made. If our ancient humanity were a
single man, it might perhaps be that he would
break down under the memory of so many
loyalties, under the burden of so many diverse
heroisms, under the load and terror of all the
goodness of men. But it has pleased God so
to isolate the individual soul that it can only
learn of all other souls by hearsay, and to each
one goodness and happiness come with the
youth and violence of lightning, as momentary
and as pure. And the doom of failure that lies
on all human systems does not in real fact affect
them any more than the worms of the inevitable
grave affect a children's game in a meadow. Not-
ting Hill has fallen ; Notting Hill has died. But
that is not the tremendous issue. Notting Hill
has lived."

"But if," answered the other voice, "if what
is achieved by all these efforts be only the
common contentment of humanity, why do

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The Napoleon of Notting Hill

men so extravagantly toil and die in them? Has
nothing been done by Notting Hill that any
chance clump of farmers or clan of savages
would not have done without it? What might
have been done to Notting Hill if the world
had been different may be a deep question;
but there is a deeper. What could have hap-
pened to the world if Notting Hill had never
been?"

The other voice replied —

"The same that would have happened to the
world and all the starry systems if an apple-tree
grew six apples instead of seven; something
would have been eternally lost. There has
never been anything in the world absolutely
like Notting Hill. There will never be any-
thing quite like it to the crack of doom. I
cannot believe anything but that God loved it
as He must surely love anything that is itself
and unreplaceable. But even for that I do not
care. If God, with all His thunders, hated it,
I loved it."

And with the voice a tall, strange figure lifted
itself out of the debris in the half-darkness.

The other voice came after a long pause, and
as it were hoarsely.

"But suppose the whole matter were really a
hocus-pocus. Suppose that whatever meaning

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Two Voices

you may choose in your fancy to give to it, the
real meaning of the whole was mockery. Sup-
pose it was all folly. Suppose — "

"I have been in it," answered the voice from
the tall and strange figure, "and I know it was
not."

A smaller figure seemed half to rise in the
dark.

"Suppose I am God," said the voice, "and
suppose I made the world in idleness. Suppose
the stars, that you think eternal, are only the
idiot fireworks of an everlasting schoolboy.
Suppose the sun and the moon, to which you
sing alternately, are only the two eyes of one
vast and sneering giant, opened alternately in a
never-ending wink. Suppose the trees, in my
eyes, are as foolish as enormous toad-stools.
Suppose Socrates and Charlemagne are to me
only beasts, made funnier by walking on their
hind legs. Suppose I am God, and having made
things, laugh at them."

"And suppose I am man," answered the
other. "And suppose that I give the answer
that shatters even a laugh. Suppose I do not
laugh back at you, do not blaspheme you, do
not curse you. But suppose, standing up
straight under the sky, with every power of my
being, I thank you for the fools' paradise you

395

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

have made. Suppose I praise you, with a lit-
eral pain of ecstasy, for the jest that has
brought me so terrible a joy. If we have taken
the child's games, and given them the serious-
ness of a Crusade, if we have drenched your
grotesque Dutch garden with the blood of
martyrs, we have turned a nursery into a
temple. I ask you, in the name of Heaven, who
wins ?"

The sky close about the crest of the hills
and trees was beginning to turn from black
to grey, with a random suggestion of the
morning. The slight figure seemed to crawl
towards the larger one, and the voice was more
human.

"But suppose, friend," it said, "suppose that,
in a bitterer and more real sense, it was all a
mockery. Suppose that there had been, from
the beginning of these great wars, one who
watched them with a sense that is beyond ex-
pression, a sense of detachment, of responsibility,
of irony, of agony. Suppose that there were one
who knew it was all a joke."

The tall figure answered —

"He could not know it. For it was not all a
joke."

And a gust of wind blew away some clouds that
sealed the sky-line, and showed a strip of silver

296

WAYNE, IT WAS ALL A JOKE'

Two Voices

behind his great dark legs. Then the other voice
came, having crept nearer still.

"Adam Wayne," it said, "there are men
who confess only in articulo mortis; there are
people who blame themselves only when they
can no longer help others. I am one of them.
Here, upon the field of the bloody end of it
all, I come to tell you plainly what you would
never understand before. Do you know who I
am?"

"I know you, Auberon Quin," answered the
tall figure, "and I shall be glad to unburden your
spirit of anything that lies upon it."

"Adam Wayne," said the other voice, "of
what I have to say you cannot in common
reason be glad to unburden me. Wayne, it
was all a joke. When I made these cities, I cared
no more for them than I care for a centaur,
or a merman, or a fish with legs, or a pig
with feathers, or any other absurdity. When
I spoke to you solemnly and encouragingly
about the flag of your freedom and the peace
of your city, I was playing a vulgar practical
joke on an honest gentleman, a vulgar prac-
tical joke that has lasted for twenty years.
Though no one could believe it of me perhaps,
it is the truth that I am a man both timid and
tender-hearted. I never dared in the early days

297

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

of your hope, or the central days of your
supremacy, to tell you this; I never dared to
break the colossal calm of your face. God
knows why I should do it now, when my farce
has ended in tragedy and the ruin of all your
people! But I say it now. Wayne, it was done
as a joke."
blew the sky clearer and clearer, leaving great

There was silence, and the freshening breeze
spaces of the white dawn.

At last Wayne said, very slowly —

"You did it all only as a joke?"

"Yes," said Quin.

"When you conceived the idea," went on
Wayne, dreamily, "of an army for Bayswater
and a flag for Notting Hill, there was no gleam,
no suggestion in your mind that such things
might be real and passionate?"

"No," answered Auberon, turning his round,
white face to the morning with a dull and splen-
did sincerity ; "I had none at all."

Wayne sprang down from the height above
him and held out his hand.

"I will not stop to thank you," he said, with
a curious joy in his voice, "for the great
good for the world you have actually wrought.
All that I think of that I have said to you a
moment ago, even when I thought that your

298

Two Voices

voice was the voice of a derisive omnipotence, its
laughter older than the winds of heaven. But
let me say what is immediate and true. You
and I, Auberon Quin, have both of us
throughout our lives been again and again called
mad. And we are mad. We are mad, be-
cause we are not two men but one man. We
are mad, because we are two lobes of the same
brain, and that brain has been cloven in two.
And if you ask for the proof of it, it is
not hard to find. It is not merely that you,
the humourist, have been in these dark days
stripped of the joy of gravity. It is not merely
that I, the fanatic, have had to grope without
humour. It is that though we seem to be oppo-
site in everything, we have been opposite like
man and woman, aiming at the same mo-
ment at the same practical thing. We are
the father and the mother of the Charter of
the Cities."

Quin looked down at the debris of leaves and
timber, the relics of the battle and stampede,
now glistening in the glowing daylight, and
finally said —

"Yet nothing can alter the antagonism — the
fact that I laughed at these things and you adored
them."

Wayne's wild face flamed with something
299

The Napoleon of dotting Hill

god-like, as he turned it to be struck by the sun-
rise.

"I know of something that will alter that an-
tagonism, something that is outside us, some-
thing that you and I have all our lives per-
haps taken too little account of. The equal and
eternal human being will alter that antagonism,
for the human being sees no real antagonism
between laughter and respect, the human being,
the common man, whom mere geniuses like
you and me can only worship like a god.
When dark and dreary days come, you and I
are necessary, the pure fanatic, the pure satirist.
We have between us remedied a great wrong.
We have lifted the modern cities into that poetry
which every one who knows mankind knows
to be immeasurably more common than the
commonplace. But in healthy people there is
no war between us. We are but the two lobes
of the brain of a ploughman. Laughter and love
are everywhere. The cathedrals, built in the
ages that loved God, are full of blasphemous gro-
tesques. The mother laughs continually at the
child, the lover laughs continually at the lover,
the wife at the husband, the friend at the
friend. Auberon Quin, we have been too long
separated; let us go out together. You have
a halberd and I a sword, let us start our

300

Two Voices

wanderings over the world. For we are its two
essentials. Come, it is already day."

In the blank white light Auberon hesitated a
moment. Then he made the formal salute with
his halberd, and they went away together into
the unknown world.

THE END.

THE LITERARY GUILLOTINE

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'The Cardinal's Snuff-Box,' and equally dainty and equally deli-
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Yet it is a fabric which promises longer endurance than many of the
heavier canvases upon which his contemporaries have painted pon-
derous pictures of historic strife and bloodshed. This is a book
full of sunshine and sparkle, full of the breath of outdoor life and
the hidden beauties of nature, and pervaded with a lyric note as
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Tht Baltimore Sun : " ' The Lady Paramount ' has all the bright-
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most artistic in method and delicate in fancy and treatment."

The Ne<w York Times : " There are some books which woo one
to the springtime. Such a book is Henry Harland's latest story,
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unless it were read in the park, under the trees, or while idly swing-
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fresh, sweet, and pure — which, on the whole, is now rare praise.'*

The International Studio

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